A House representative from Texas has reintroduced a bill to Congress that would direct border security to collect biometric data from migrants in order to crack down on asylum fraud and human trafficking.
Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX), who represents Kaufman County and parts of eastern Dallas County, is putting forth the bill.
“Violent cartels are using children as pawns in their illicit border operations while convicted criminals infiltrate our borders unopposed,” Gooden said in a press release sent to The Dallas Express. “Meanwhile, the Biden administration remains asleep at the wheel.”
Thousands of migrants come to the border accompanied by children and claim to be one of the children’s parents or a relative. However, such claims can often be guises for child trafficking or fraudulent asylum claims, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The B-VERIFY Act would direct the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Health and Human Services to run DNA testing on migrants with children to verify whether they are actually related.
“It is imperative Congress arm our law enforcement with the resources they need to protect our national security and secure our borders from the horror of human trafficking,” Gooden said, per the press release.
During fiscal year 2022, roughly 130,000 migrant children crossed into the United States, an all-time high, CBS News reported. According to DHS, human trafficking arrests have increased by 35% between fiscal years 2020 and 2021.
“I can’t imagine anyone making an argument that we shouldn’t ensure that traffickers are not trafficking and families coming across really are families,” said Gooden per Fox News, claiming that his bill “should have bipartisan support.”
Texas Public Policy Foundation CEO Greg Sindelar told the news outlet, “The B-VERIFY Act would be a large step forward to securing our southern border. By collecting this biometric data, DHS will be able to better expose erroneous asylum claims, prevent immigration fraud and protect children from human trafficking.”
Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said in the aforementioned press release that the legislation will give “our immigration officials the tools they need to combat illegal immigration and human trafficking.”
Former President Donald Trump’s administration launched a pilot program in 2020 that aimed to use biometric data to catch unlawful migrants falsely claiming to be related to children in their company at the border. However, various contracts that undergirded the program have since expired and have not been renewed by President Joe Biden.
Several Democrats in the Senate challenged Trump’s proposal at the time, calling it “unnecessary, unjustified, and invasive.”
They claimed the initiative “would put into the hands of the federal government massive amounts of biometric data taken without consent from hundreds of thousands of migrants who have done nothing other than seek a better life in our country.”
