Defend The Children

A Truth Trench Think Tank Initiative

Executive Summary

The Defend The Children campaign represents a critical citizen-driven response to documented systemic failures within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) regarding the protection of unaccompanied migrant children. Launched through Truth Trench Think Tank in collaboration with federal whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas, this initiative mobilized American citizens to participate directly in federal regulatory processes, generating over 66,610 public comments and 1,476 letters—establishing a national record for civic engagement on child welfare policy.

Within three months of launching this initiative, documented policy changes occurred within HHS infrastructure, personnel decisions, and operational procedures. This case study demonstrates how strategic citizen engagement, when coupled with credible whistleblower testimony and coordinated advocacy, can influence federal agency behavior and catalyze meaningful reform in child protection systems.

Background and Context

The Crisis of Unaccompanied Migrant Children

Beginning in 2021, the United States experienced an unprecedented surge in unaccompanied alien children (UACs) arriving at the southern border. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics:

• Fiscal Year 2020: 33,239 unaccompanied children encountered
• Fiscal Year 2021: 146,000+ unaccompanied children encountered
• Fiscal Year 2022: 152,000+ unaccompanied children encountered
• Since January 2021: Over 500,000 unaccompanied children processed through the system

This 340% increase in just one year overwhelmed existing infrastructure designed for significantly lower volumes, creating conditions that would expose critical vulnerabilities in the sponsor vetting and child placement processes.

Operation Artemis and Emergency Intake Sites

In response to severe overcrowding at U.S. Border Patrol facilities in March and April 2021, the Biden administration launched Operation Artemis, an inter-agency effort to rapidly process unaccompanied children. As part of this operation, HHS opened more than a dozen Emergency Intake Sites (EISs) across the United States, including:

• Pomona Fairplex Emergency Intake Site, California (opened May 1, 2021)
• Fort Bliss tent facility, Texas
• Convention centers in Dallas, San Antonio, San Diego, and Long Beach
• Former oil worker facilities in Midland and Pecos, Texas

These Emergency Intake Sites operated under lower standards of care than traditional HHS-licensed shelters and were explicitly designed as “short-term, stop-gap facilities.” The Pomona Fairplex site alone processed over 8,300 children in less than six months, with a potential capacity of 2,500 beds.

The Whistleblower: Tara Lee Rodas

Professional Background

Tara Lee Rodas serves as a federal employee at the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), bringing years of experience in federal oversight and investigative work. In 2021, she volunteered to assist the Biden administration during the humanitarian crisis at the southern border, believing she would help place vulnerable children in safe, loving homes.

Deployment and Discovery

Rodas was deployed to the Pomona Fairplex Emergency Intake Site in California as deputy to the director of the Federal Case Management Team. Her role involved helping the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement reunite children with sponsors in the United States. What she discovered fundamentally altered her understanding of the system and compelled her to become a whistleblower.

Beginning in June 2021, Rodas and her team began identifying and reporting suspicious sponsors and suspected trafficking cases. Initially, they estimated fewer than 50 children were affected. However, after processing more than 8,300 children through the Pomona Fairplex facility, they realized thousands of children were potentially at risk.

Key Findings and Observations

Rodas documented systematic failures in the sponsor vetting process, including:

• Children delivered to sponsors affiliated with known criminal organizations, including MS-13 and 18th Street gangs
• Multiple children sent to the same addresses already under investigation for trafficking
• Sponsors who could not provide definitive information about where children would be living
• Children expressing fear and uncertainty about their assigned sponsors
• A culture prioritizing speed of placement over safety assessments

Perhaps most troubling was the response Rodas received when raising concerns. She was explicitly told by her superior, an attorney and director: “Tara, you need to understand at HHS, we only get sued if we keep kids in care too long. We don’t get sued by traffickers.”

Retaliation and Courage

When DHS whistleblower Aaron Stevenson went public in August 2021 with concerns about children being delivered to MS-13 gang members, officials discovered that Rodas had reported these issues to both the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General and HHS’s Office of Inspector General. Within 20 days:

• Rodas was falsely accused of wrongdoing
• She was threatened with investigation
• She was walked off the site in front of her peers (a “perp walk”)
• Her badge was confiscated

Despite this retaliation, Rodas continued her advocacy, ultimately testifying before multiple congressional committees and becoming a central figure in exposing what she characterized as “government-sponsored, taxpayer-funded child trafficking.”

Congressional Testimony and National Attention

April 26, 2023: House Judiciary Committee Testimony

On April 26, 2023, Rodas testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement at a hearing titled “The Biden Border Crisis: Exploitation of Unaccompanied Alien Children.” Her testimony was unequivocal and devastating:

“I thought I was going to help place children in loving homes. Instead, I discovered that children are being trafficked through a sophisticated network that begins with being recruited in their home country, smuggled to the U.S. border, and ends when ORR delivers a child to sponsors—some sponsors are criminals and traffickers and members of Transnational Criminal Organizations. Some sponsors view children as commodities and assets to be used for earning income—this is why we are witnessing an explosion of labor trafficking.”

She continued:

“Whether intentional or not, it can be argued that the U.S. government has become the middleman in a large-scale, multi-billion-dollar, child trafficking operation run by bad actors seeking to profit off the lives of children. Realizing that we were not offering children the American dream, but instead putting them into modern-day slavery with wicked overlords was a terrible revelation.”

The Scope: 85,000 Missing Children

One of the most shocking revelations in Rodas’s testimony concerned the scale of the crisis. She referenced data showing that HHS had lost immediate contact with approximately 85,000 children after releasing them to sponsors. This figure was corroborated by reporting from The New York Times, which found that over a two-year period, the department lost contact with roughly one-third of the migrant children they had placed.

The Times investigation revealed that the majority of child welfare caseworkers hired by the federal government estimated that approximately two-thirds of unaccompanied migrant children ended up working full-time—many in dangerous conditions at slaughterhouses, factories, and restaurants, working overnight shifts to pay debts to smugglers and traffickers.

Subsequent Congressional Appearances

Following her April 2023 testimony, Rodas appeared at additional congressional hearings, including:

• July 9, 2024: Senate roundtable hosted by Senators Chuck Grassley, Bill Cassidy, and Ron Johnson examining HHS failures
• November 21, 2024: House Homeland Security Committee hearing on the Biden-Harris administration’s refusal to protect unaccompanied alien children

Her consistent testimony across multiple forums established her credibility and kept sustained pressure on federal agencies to reform their practices.

The Defend The Children Initiative

Strategic Design and Implementation

Truth Trench Think Tank, in partnership with Tara Lee Rodas, designed the Defend The Children campaign as a strategic intervention in the federal regulatory process. Recognizing that HHS had proposed a rule that would further institutionalize problematic policies while reducing accountability, the initiative aimed to mobilize concerned citizens to participate directly in the public comment period—a critical mechanism in administrative law that agencies are legally required to consider.

Campaign Mechanics

The campaign employed a sophisticated yet accessible approach:

• Phase 1: Content Creation – Whistleblowers and legal experts drafted detailed comments addressing specific regulatory concerns, citing relevant statutes including the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) and the Homeland Security Act (HSA)
• Phase 2: Distribution Platform – Truth Trench created a dedicated landing page (truthtrench.org/defendthechildren) with a streamlined two-step process: (1) Click “COPY” to copy whistleblower-drafted text, and (2) Paste and submit on Regulations.gov
• Phase 3: Mobilization – The initiative was promoted through content creators, social media, and grassroots networks, emphasizing that participation required less than two minutes
• Phase 4: Sustained Pressure – Beyond comments, the campaign created template letters calling for resignations of officials who supported the problematic rule, targeting specific congressional leaders by name

This multi-phase approach reduced barriers to participation while ensuring that citizen voices carried substantive weight backed by expert analysis.

Unprecedented Results

The campaign generated measurable outcomes that exceeded all projections:

• 66,610 public comments submitted to Regulations.gov (a national record for this type of regulatory action)
• 1,476 letters sent demanding accountability and resignations
• Sustained engagement over months, not just a single surge of activity
• Documented policy changes within HHS within three months of launch

As Rodas herself testified: “Truth Trench Think Tank helped alter HHS policy, infrastructure, and personnel—all within 3 months.”

Documentation of Systemic Failures

The Defend The Children campaign grounded its advocacy in documented evidence of specific policy failures and their consequences. This evidence-based approach proved critical to achieving tangible results.

Inadequate Sponsor Vetting

The campaign highlighted that HHS/ORR lacked the investigative capacity and legal authority to conduct thorough sponsor background checks. Key problems included:

• ORR is not an investigative or law enforcement agency, yet was tasked with evaluating sponsor suitability
• Limited information sharing with law enforcement agencies due to privacy protections
• No requirement for sponsors to maintain contact with ORR after child placement
• Rodas’s testimony that “it is easier to get a UAC than to get a pet” captured the inadequacy of screening processes

Culture of Speed Over Safety

Multiple witnesses documented that HHS leadership prioritized rapid processing and discharge of children to avoid the political optics of crowded facilities. This “culture of speed over safety” manifested in:

• Explicit directives from HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra to accelerate processing timelines
• Average stays of only 37 days in HHS care despite inadequate sponsor vetting
• Federal case managers instructed not to investigate suspicious sponsors: “Your job is to get the child to that sponsor”
• Leadership statements acknowledging lawsuit risk for keeping children “too long” but not for delivering them to traffickers

Lack of Post-Placement Monitoring

Perhaps most critically, the campaign documented that HHS/ORR had no systematic mechanism for monitoring children’s welfare after release. Robin Dunn Marcos, Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, testified before Congress that “O.R.R. does not monitor or track the whereabouts of children after they are released from our care.” This policy created a blind spot where exploitation could flourish undetected.

Retaliation Against Whistleblowers

The campaign also highlighted the agency’s pattern of retaliating against employees who raised concerns about child safety. Multiple whistleblowers, including Rodas and Deborah White, testified about facing:

• False accusations of wrongdoing
• Threats of investigation
• Removal from worksites and badge confiscation
• Policies designed to prevent legally protected whistleblower disclosures to Congress and Inspectors General

This pattern of retaliation had a chilling effect that discouraged other federal employees from coming forward with concerns about child safety.

Documented Impact and Outcomes

Three-Month Transformation Timeline

The campaign’s assertion that it “helped alter HHS policy, infrastructure, and personnel—all within 3 months” is supported by documented changes in federal operations and increased congressional oversight. While HHS did not publicly attribute specific policy changes directly to the Defend The Children campaign, the temporal correlation and sustained pressure are significant.

Legislative and Congressional Response

The campaign contributed to substantial congressional action:

• Senator Chuck Grassley led a bipartisan group of over 40 Senate colleagues in introducing a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to disapprove the harmful Biden administration UC program rule
• Multiple congressional hearings specifically addressing whistleblower testimony and the 85,000 missing children
• Senator Grassley shared evidence of potential child trafficking with law enforcement in January 2024 based on whistleblower disclosures
• Demands for HHS to immediately change policies preventing legally protected whistleblower disclosures

Increased Public Awareness and Media Coverage

The campaign successfully elevated a previously obscure issue into national consciousness. Major media outlets, including The New York Times, Fox News, and others, produced investigative reports documenting:

• Migrant children as young as 12 working in violation of child labor laws in major U.S. factories
• Children working overnight shifts at slaughterhouses, factories, and restaurants
• The explosion of labor trafficking involving recently arrived migrants
• Systematic failures in HHS procedures and oversight

Model for Citizen Engagement

Beyond specific policy outcomes, the Defend The Children campaign established a replicable model for strategic citizen participation in federal governance. Key innovations included:

• Leveraging whistleblower expertise to create substantive, legally grounded comments
• Simplifying participation barriers through technology and clear instructions
• Coordinating with content creators and grassroots networks for distribution
• Maintaining sustained engagement rather than one-time activism
• Combining regulatory comments with direct advocacy (resignation letters) targeting decision-makers

Ongoing Challenges and Future Advocacy

The Scale of the Problem Persists

Despite the campaign’s successes, fundamental problems remain:

• As of November 2024, witness testimony indicated over 320,000 unaccompanied migrant children are unaccounted for or did not appear for immigration court hearings
• The structural problems enabling exploitation—inadequate vetting, lack of post-placement monitoring, and a “speed over safety” culture—require comprehensive statutory reform, not just administrative adjustments
• Transnational criminal organizations continue to operate sophisticated trafficking networks that exploit policy loopholes

Required Systemic Reforms

The Defend The Children campaign has articulated specific policy recommendations that remain essential:

• Mandatory post-placement monitoring with required sponsor check-ins to ORR
• Enhanced sponsor vetting including comprehensive background checks and home studies
• Greater information sharing between ORR and law enforcement agencies
• Protection for whistleblowers who report concerns about child safety
• Ending the “culture of speed over safety” through revised performance metrics
• Establishing enforcement mechanisms for the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA)

The Path Forward

Truth Trench Think Tank continues to maintain the Defend The Children platform as an active resource for concerned citizens. The initiative’s success demonstrates that strategic, well-coordinated civic engagement can influence federal policy even on highly complex issues involving multiple agencies and entrenched bureaucratic interests.

The campaign has established several key principles for effective citizen advocacy:

• Ground advocacy in documented evidence from credible sources
• Leverage existing legal frameworks (public comment periods, whistleblower protections) strategically
• Reduce barriers to participation through clear instructions and technology
• Maintain sustained engagement rather than one-time efforts
• Coordinate across multiple channels—regulatory comments, legislative advocacy, media engagement

Conclusion: A Case Study in Democratic Accountability

The Defend The Children initiative represents a significant achievement in civic engagement and democratic accountability. By mobilizing over 66,000 citizens to participate in federal regulatory processes and generating more than 1,400 advocacy letters, the campaign demonstrated that concerned Americans can influence federal policy on critical child welfare issues.

The campaign’s success rested on several key factors: the courage and credibility of whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas, whose firsthand testimony provided unassailable evidence of systemic failures; the strategic deployment of Truth Trench Think Tank’s resources to create accessible participation mechanisms; the sustained commitment of thousands of concerned citizens who devoted time to formal advocacy; and the coordination across multiple channels including congressional testimony, regulatory comments, media engagement, and direct advocacy.

While significant challenges remain in protecting unaccompanied migrant children from trafficking and exploitation, the Defend The Children campaign has established that strategic citizen engagement can alter federal agency behavior, catalyze congressional action, and elevate critical issues into national consciousness. The documented impact—policy changes within three months, unprecedented public comment participation, ongoing legislative efforts—validates the model of evidence-based, strategically coordinated civic activism.

For Think Tank authorities evaluating this initiative, the Defend The Children campaign offers a compelling case study in how non-governmental organizations can effectively leverage whistleblower testimony, administrative procedures, and grassroots mobilization to drive policy reform on issues of profound moral importance. The campaign’s replicable model, documented outcomes, and continued relevance make it worthy of serious consideration for recognition and further study.

“My goal is to inspire action to safeguard the lives of migrant children, including the staggering 85,000 that are missing. Today, children will work overnight shifts at slaughterhouses, factories, restaurants to pay their debts to smugglers and traffickers. Today, children will be sold for sex. It is my hope you’ll take action to end this crisis and safeguard the lives of these vulnerable children.”

— Tara Lee Rodas

HHS Whistleblower, Federal Inspector General Employee

Key Resources and References

Campaign Platform: truthtrench.org/defendthechildren

Congressional Testimony: House Judiciary Committee, April 26, 2023 – “The Biden Border Crisis: Exploitation of Unaccompanied Alien Children”

Senate Roundtable: Senators Grassley, Cassidy, and Johnson, July 9, 2024

House Homeland Security: November 21, 2024 – Testimony on unaccompanied alien children

For more information about Truth Trench Think Tank and the Defend The Children initiative:

TruthTrench.org

Truth Trench Think Tank

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