The whistleblower, Tara Lee Rodas, volunteered to assist the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [HHS] with the processing of unaccompanied migrant children and was deployed to the Emergency Intake Site in Pomona, California.
Rodas sat down with Project Veritas founder, James O’Keefe, and described how precarious she believes the current child sponsorship program is for these minors.
“The tax dollars of people who are listening are paying to put children in the hands of criminals,” Rodas told O’Keefe.
“Our sponsors typically are not citizens. They’re not permanent residents. They don’t have a legal presence,” she said.
“The sponsor can hold up an ‘Order of Deportation’ to a [migrant] child and say, ‘This is your Order of Deportation. If you do not do what I say, when I say, I’m going to call ICE on you myself.’ We are paying to put children in the hands of criminals.”
The whistleblower affirmed that she has questioned federal government bureaucrats about the potential wrongdoing happening within their institutions, and the response has usually been dismissive of her concerns. She believes she has suffered retaliation at work for raising these issues.
“I said [to the command center executives], ‘We’re getting ready to send another child [to Austin, Texas],’ and they said, ‘Tara, I think you need to understand that we only get sued if we keep kids in care too long. We don’t get sued by traffickers. Are you clear? We don’t get sued by traffickers.’ So, that was the answer of the United States federal government. HHS did not want this information to get out,” Rodas said.
“They knew I had made protected disclosures and they retaliated against me as a whistleblower and had me kicked off the site so I could no longer research the cases,” she said.
As a result of Rodas’ stepping forward, Project Veritas journalists visited several physical addresses provided by the whistleblower in order to interview individuals and investigate whether trafficking was taking place.
A Veritas journalist spoke to a migrant female minor on one of these occasions, who revealed that she had been put through sexual abuse by her sponsor.
“An aunt [sponsored me], but she kicked me out of her house. She was pimping me and I didn’t like that. She would pimp me to men,” the child said.
“I just escaped one night. I told her [aunt], ‘I’m going to the laundromat.’ She [aunt] went to the laundromat and didn’t find me there. Later on, she called Immigration.”
Project Veritas will be releasing more information on this issue this week as the story continues to develop. Whistleblowers who are aware of similar situations are invited to contact VeritasTips@protonmail.com with information the public deserves to know about.
About Project Veritas
James O’Keefe established Project Veritas in 2010 as a non-profit journalism enterprise to continue his undercover reporting work. Today, Project Veritas investigates and exposes corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions to achieve a more ethical and transparent society and to engage in litigation to: protect, defend and expand human and civil rights secured by law, specifically First Amendment rights including promoting the free exchange of ideas in a digital world; combat and defeat censorship of any ideology; promote truthful reporting; and defend freedom of speech and association issues including the right to anonymity. O’Keefe serves as the CEO and Chairman of the Board so that he can continue to lead and teach his fellow journalists, as well as protect and nurture the Project Veritas culture.
Project Veritas is a registered 501(c)3 organization. Project Veritas does not advocate specific resolutions to the issues raised through its investigations.
Source ProjectVeritas
