Experts are sounding the alarm on the fact that the sex trafficking of minors has more than tripled under the Biden-Harris administration. “Biden’s border policies have led to an explosion in the forced prostitution of migrants in the U.S.,” wrote The Free Press’s investigative reporter Madeleine Rowley. In fact, added an informant from the nonprofit Shepherd’s Watch, “Nearly all … sex-trafficking rings now are migrant girls,” with a notable explosion of online sex-trafficking ads of women “within the first three months of the border being open.”

During “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” last week, Rowley explained how there’s no doubt the rise in sex trafficking “is directly tied to Biden opening the border.” Criminals are smuggling women and girls “across the border promising them a better life, promising them jobs, only to trick them and force them into prostitution after they have crossed the border.” As Family Research Council President Tony Perkins highlighted, unaccompanied “minors … are entrapped in this” by being handed off by the federal government directly “into the custody of people who are going to abuse them and exploit them.”

According to Rowley’s research, there were roughly 137,000 unaccompanied minors that crossed the border in 2023 alone. “[T]he government is tasked with vetting the sponsors that these children are released to,” she said. While “a lot of the times they’re released to … people that they know,” they’re often “released to what they call ‘category ‘three sponsors’ or ‘unrelated sponsors,’” many of whom are unvetted or the ones doing the trafficking.

It’s “just absolutely shocking and heartbreaking that our government is facilitating the exploitation of women and children,” Perkins sighed. But as guest host Jody Hice explained on Friday’s episode of “Washington Watch,” “This story certainly has been going on for years,” which only makes it that much more shocking as “new details continue to emerge that paint an absolutely heartbreaking picture of the abuse that is taking place.”

“Within the last week,” Breitbart reported, “158 unaccompanied migrant children have been sent across the Rio Grande into the small town of Eagle Pass.” These children range between the ages of five and 17 years old. According to Tara Rodas, a whistleblower who formerly worked for the Department of Health and Human Services, this crisis is not merely being allowed by the government but is being fueled by the government. “[W]hat we now know,” said Rodas, is that this “is government sponsored, taxpayer-funded child trafficking.”

“I can assure you,” she stated, “I never thought I’d be saying that.” Hice agreed, “It’s just absolutely unthinkable.” He went on to note how if it were not for whistleblowers, such as Rodas, exposing these realities, “[W]e would not even be aware of what’s been going on.” Providing further details, Rodas explained how “at the beginning of 2021, the Biden-Harris administration made a call to all federal employees,” asking them to help with the crisis of unaccompanied minors crossing the border. Rodas volunteered to offer a hand.

“I thought I was going to be coloring and doing puzzles with children,” she said. “I’m a Spanish speaker, and I thought I could be that person who would be there to greet the children and, … find out what are their plans about coming to America and living the American dream.” However, “it didn’t take very long for those illusions to evaporate,” Rodas explained, because the “children began to tell us the truth.” What those kids revealed is that many of them did not know who they were being sent to. It became clear, as Rodas described, that they were “lured here under the promise that they’re going to” get rich, only to get thrown into “modern day slavery.”

Through her first-hand experience with these children, Rodas detailed how they had “reported being sexually abused [and] being pimped out by their sponsors” — some of which “are actually gang members” from “violent criminal organizations.” It’s nothing short of “horrific,” she sighed, especially considering that taxpayer dollars are going into “vulnerable children … being shipped to known bad actors.” It’s as if we’ve become “the FedEx of children from the border to traffickers,” she lamented.

“[I]t’s a shocking story,” Rodas contended, and “people need to know about” it. “This is not humanitarian. This isn’t helping the children. They’re in slavery.” And this is why it’s appropriate to call it “government sponsored, taxpayer funded child trafficking,” Hice added, arguing how it explains how “such a horrifying thing has now become a partisan issue.” Rodas agreed, noting that “everybody should want to protect and defend children.”

Ultimately, Rodas argued, “[I]f you’re not in the box of protect and defend children … that puts you outside of all political realms.” This crisis is not a matter of red and blue, she insisted, but “we’re talking about good versus evil.” The problem is that “failed policies and policy makers” are at the heart of this “crisis because they rolled back the ability for people to come across the border,” she described. “They made it simple so that vetting is not being done. And then they opened the floodgates for these children to come across” and be taken to criminals.

It’s “unbelievable,” Hice groaned. In order to stop this crisis from getting worse, Rodas urged, “We need people who are going to put sane policies in place. We need to rescue children, and we need to seriously prosecute criminals.” And we also need people, Hice concluded, who are willing to continue putting a “spotlight on this and … deal with it courageously.”