Tara Rodas worked in the USA in 2021 in a management position at a reception center for unaccompanied children.
She responded to a call from the Biden administration to assist with the crisis of underage refugees who, at
the time, were crossing the southern US border en masse.
She wanted to help reunite the children with their families.
However, she soon realized that something was quite wrong with the children.
They suffered from panic attacks, screamed for their parents and said that they had been lured to the United States by smugglers.
Rodas investigated and came across a huge child trafficking network.
This is how she became a whistleblower who is now fighting to expose these networks and bring them to justice.
In a moving interview with Chris Farrell, she reports about her findings.
She uncovers how these children are passed on to criminals who then force them into forced labor or prostitution.
She tells of doctors who tearfully describe how very young children are scarred by massive sexual abuse and already
suffer from sexually transmitted diseases at primary school age.
She also describes how the state supports this child trafficking operation to a tune of billions, that 325,000 of these
children are now considered missing and that the Ministry of Health is blocking the urgently needed clarification.
See excerpts from the video with Tara Rodas below.
The interview was conducted in October 2024, i.e. before the last US election.
Therefore, at the end of the program, we will take a look at the developments in this matter under the current US administration.
: I'm Chris Farrell, and this is "On Watch".
Welcome to "On Watch," Judicial Watch's podcast where we look behind the headlines to bring you stories that the
mainstream media really doesn't want you to know about.
We try to recover some lost history and explain the inexplicable.
And today, we've got all three of these elements for you.
We are being joined once again by a brave lady who identified and has exposed an incredible human trafficking, sex
trafficking crisis, a child abuse crisis really, in our country.
We are going to welcome Tara Rodas. Welcome, Tara!
:Chris, thank you so much for having me on your show today.
I really appreciate you and Judicial Watch for continuing to shine a light on what we know is
government sponsored, taxpayer-funded child trafficking.
: Exactly. And folks that are loyal viewers and listeners to our podcast, you will recall
And I know you'll recall, because we had huge numbers on our first interview back in July 2023,
so a little over a year ago, about 14 months ago.
We had Tara on to discuss her experiences in an unaccompanied child reception and processing center.
The story is incredible. I think we went on over an hour.
My colleagues here will link that episode to this one so you can watch both if you're not familiar with it.
But just as kind of a starting point, as a common reference point, Tara, tell our folks how you came to learn
about and become aware of this outrageous, brutal, government-sponsored child trafficking operation.
Yes. Well, Chris, your viewers may remember that at the beginning of 2021, the Biden-Harris
administration made a call to all federal employees.
And they said, "If you're a federal employee, we want you to leave your home agency and
help with the crisis on the southern border".
And specifically, it was the crisis of these unaccompanied children.
Children who were coming to our borders with no family, with no parent.
And then the goal was to reunited these children with sponsors here in the United States.
And I believed it was a family reunification program.
I thought I was going to be coloring with kids and doing puzzles while they were waiting to be
reunited with their parents here in the United States.
And it was nothing like that. I mean, that was... your best intentions had absolutely
nothing to do with what was really going on.
Correct. And what I did not know and many of the other federal employees across the
government who mobilized to help this mission.
No one knew that children had been trafficked through this program and exploited for more than a decade.
It's absolutely stunning.
So, I didn't know when I said, "Hey, here I am, send me. I want to help these children."
My husband is from El Salvador. I'm a Spanish speaker.
And I thought this was going to be the humanitarian mission of my lifetime. It's going to be fantastic.
Right.
Only to learn that children did not know who they were going to.
And it was shocking.
And even, when we talk about children, sometimes folks have in their minds: Oh, this is a 14-year-old, or you know, technically
a child, but a 16- or 17-year-old is obviously a much more sophisticated human being than, you know, a 10-year-old.
But you're not just talking about, not just young people like that, but you're talking about little ones.
Yes.
I mean, literally babies that were sent across the border into the United States.
Yes. Infants and toddlers. It's... it's unthinkable.
But Carlos Ariano, the whistleblower from MVM (US security company), he transported an infant that was three months old.
So, people need to understand...
MVM is a security firm that was contracted to move... not all of these kids, obviously, but they had a role.
They had a contract in moving people for the US government.
Yes. And it's millions and millions of dollars are involved in the transportation of these children.
It's absolutely unbelievable. And they are as young as three months old.
And, you know, Chris, I would submit that some of the children that I saw with my very own
eyes, who were teens, and some were teen boys.
But when they're from indigenous populations of Guatemala, and they speak Mayan dialects and can't speak Spanish.
Right.
They are absolutely, completely vulnerable.
Some of these children have never been to school.
They can't read. They can't write.
And then they are here, in forced labor conditions.
And the New York Times has revealed this.
And it's stunning that no one to this date has gone to rescue the children.
Yeah, I mean, that's a really interesting part of the story, is that, obviously you have your first-hand
personal experience in the processing center for these kids.
But the larger story was even covered,
And I think a three-part series by the New York Times discussing child labor in meat processing factories other places.
Yes.
And you'd think that would register somewhere on the Biden-Harris left, of, "Oh my Goodness, our own propaganda mouthpiece,
the New York Times, even they're saying we've created a crisis."
But somehow it got reported. I mean, to their credit, they did the reporting.
Which was horrific. But it didn't seemed to be cause any kind of ripple effect or reaction, nothing.
No, there's been no ripple effect at all. There's been no action to save these children.
And I think that is one of the most stunning things.
In 2021, when we began reporting trafficking cases so this was June of 2021 we thought maybe, maybe this involved like 50 kids.
But by the time we were done processing more than 8,300 kids in less than 6 months through
the Pomona Fairplex Intake site where I was.
We were thinking: 'Oh my Goodness, this is affecting thousands of children: Because we
were seeing cases from all different sites.
But then, in 2023, Hannah Dreier's reporting in the New York Times, they revealed 85,000 children were gone, missing.
Right, and when we last spoke, that was kind of the number that we used to quantify the crisis.
But, in fact, it's far worse than that. It's four times than number.
The number now being used, I think authoritatively, I think well established, although it's still a guess really.
The number now is 325,000 children who are gone.
They are missing. No one knows what their situation is or where they are.
It's just, they've... puff! They've been trafficked and they are gone.
Yes. And that's what's stunning, is that no one has gone to rescue the children.
And people need to understand that this is a policy issue.
We could begin the largest child rescue operation that's ever been attempted in the
history of mankind if the HHS would give the data.
So, Chris, this is the thing I think most people just don't realize.
People are thinking: "Oh my Goodness! The children are gone! What can I do?"
And they think they can't do anything or that nothing can be done.
When, in fact, the federal government has the data of not only the children, but also the sponsor to whom
child went, as well as detailed information about that sponsor, like their last known address.
But they won't go after them and they won't turn over the data, not even with subpoena will
HHS give this information to law enforcement.
And, as a result of this administration stonewalling this data; hiding it from law enforcement,
320,000 plus children, nobody knows where they are.
And that's unacceptable.
To me, to my way of thinking, without advocating any particular outcome or any kind of endorsement, I believe this
incredibly important public education information, right?
So, voters in the next few days... We're going to have a national election and people are going to
make decisions, and fill out a ballot or pull a lever.
You need to make an informed decision.
And so, our border Tsar, Kamala Harris, , has presided over what's in my opinion the largest human trafficking,
sex trafficking operation in the history of the world.
And more particular, more specifically, this is a child trafficking question that you and I are talking about.
You have first-hand knowledge and experience in this.
You have observed it.
I know you are talking here today in your personal capacity, but fortunately you come out of the world,
professional world of Inspector General community.
And so, I'll use a colloquial or slang term.
You are a little 'smarter' than the average bear.
You know, you know what you are looking at when you see this kind of fraud and scam and manipulation.
You've got an antenna to detect that.
And so you see what's going on in this Pomona facility, and you say, "Hey, woah! What are you guys doing?"
I mean, just relate a little bit, remind our viewers and listeners of your kind of like reflex reaction of
"What the heck is going on here? What are you doing?"
Right. Well, it was very simple to see that when children were having panic attacks, having to be put on
suicide watch, screaming for their parents, telling us stories about how they were lured here.
It didn't take very long to realize we have a serious problem.
These... these are children. I mean, that is precious cargo.
We have to make sure that these children are going to safe homes.
And that was the moment when I started to see immediately a crisis with these children.
That something had to be wrong.
And I think it's important for people to understand HHS is not a law enforcement agency.
They simply do not have the knowledge, skills, ability or trade-craft to go after human trafficking organizations.
Right.
They don't. And sadly, they are responsible right now for releasing, because of their lack...
... Again, these were policy decisions that were made.
Unfortunately, it was a major miscalculation on behalf of people making policy to roll back
screening, roll back vetting for these supposed sponsors.
And we know that some of these sponsors are members of transnational criminal organizations.
HHS does not have the trade-craft to go after gangs and high-level criminal actors.
So sadly, the failed open border policies have allowed criminal, high-level criminal actors, murderers, members of
transnational criminal organizations to cross our borders.
They are now also the sponsors, the caregivers of vulnerable children.
And it is ... it's unthinkable!
But they (HHS) are not law enforcement.
And so, they just don't know.
And, I think it's important to note, and you've made the point clear, but just I want to provide a little background.
Some of our viewers and listeners may not realize, they think of border patrol...
They think of ICE .
They think of, you know, the sort of the law enforcement entities in dealing with illegal immigration.
But, critical to this entire discussion is that when it comes to unaccompanied children, it's not a border patrol/ICE issue.
It falls under the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Refugee Resettlement - ORR.
And that is the actual government agency responsible for the care, and the maintenance and the placement of children.
And so, these are health care types, or health administrators who are managing this process.
So, as you pointed out, they are not law enforcement.
They don't know how to vet people or run checks or...
They just manage bodies basically.
And you've got a very sophisticated criminal enterprise.
Yes.
And they're going after a commodity, and that commodity are these young children.
And they know how to exploit, and manipulate, and monetize, and scoop up these kids for God knows what purpose.
Exactly. And that's the thing that I think your average viewer and most people just do not understand: that there are
evil people in the world who view children as commodities.
Right.
And they are using them for labor trafficking schemes, for sex trafficking schemes and worse.
Because drugs are sold one time; one-time use for the person who is selling drugs.
Yeah, they get money for it, but they sell it once.
When you have a child, you get to use them on a daily basis.
Multiple times a day, and it is a continuous source of revenue!
And this is the thing that people just need to wrap their minds around.
That there are people who think like this and we must have policies in place to protect children!
There is a war on children right now.
And people need to wake up that we can solve this, but not with the current situation that is happening right now.
This program needs to be dramatically revamped.
And law enforcement needs to be put back into the equation.
This is going to take a strong executive.
But they can absolutely today begin rescuing children.
Today, they could begin prosecuting criminal sponsors and traffickers.
Today, they could begin to dismantle these criminal elements and this trafficking infrastructure.
That could happen today if you have the right people in place.
Absolutely!
And it was pretty obvious in some instances that the bad guys who were scooping up these kids, you know, they
were using the same address for, you know, multiple sponsors, multiple kids they were picking up.
I mean, they didn't fake it, right?
Some of these people were very sloppy and lazy. And so, you had one apartment building or one apartment, and
you had multiple "sponsors" and maybe a half dozen or dozen kids, all tied to one address.
So, it doesn't take some super analytical process to figure out the system was being gamed by these bad guys.
Yes. Anybody with any data analytics ability could see that this doesn't make sense when I have a "sponsor" who's
sponsoring two separate addresses or I have an apartment that has three sponsors inside sponsoring multiple children.
This is not rocket science.
Right.
And so, the fact that this program has existed in its same form for all of this time is once again, it's evidence that the people
who are in charge clearly are not capable of identifying trafficking networks and they can't
keep the children out of the hands of traffickers.
So, a radical change needs to happen to save these children!
Was it routine for these children to be photographed and fingerprinted?
So, fingerprints? No. We were taking photographs of the children.
And so, that is another thing that's important for people to know. HHS has a photograph of the child.
HHS has information. They just won't turn it over.
Yeah. So, these are legitimate...
These are legitimate leads.
Yes.
I mean, if that had happened three years ago, Lord knows where they are.
But,but there is some basic leg-work, some basic police work that could done to track
down addresses and people and to look for kids.
You got a picture. And so now, it's not a 12-year-old girl, maybe now she's 14. But you still have a picture of her and
you have a general description and perhaps even an identity.
So there is some police work that could be done, even at the the preliminary level just to
try to identify who could immediately be rescued.
Absolutely!
And, who are the criminals to go after.
Right.
Tara Rodas: Because, obviously if you have a hundred children delivered to one address, well, that right there would be
an intel packet to go right to the law enforcement to go look.
But they won't turn over the data, Chris.
It's unbelievable.
Senator Grassley did a criminal referral.
Senator Grassley has been standing up for these unaccompanied children for years.
He had Senate hearings back in July.
He actually did criminal referrals to FBI and DHS , but because HHS would not release the data, not even with subpoenas,
would they comply.
In most instances, it only resulted in homeland security investigations able to find less than 4% of their targets.
So less than 4% of the kids they went after and less than 4% of the traffickers because HHS is
not being compliant and won't give them the data.
It is unthinkable.
What is the HHS (claim)...? What is the...?
Are they using a privacy claim or what? What is this ridiculous non-compliance?
What...? I mean... normally they offer some phoney baloney excuse, however laughable.
They at least go through the motions of pretending to be legal or, you know, protecting... protecting youth or privacy.
Is that what they use as their excuse?
So yeah, they are saying it's the privacy of the sponsor. And that's what they value over everything else.
And it's absolutely again wrong thinking.
Yes. Yes.
Sponsors never need to report back to ORR.
So we are delivering a child to a person who never, ever needs to accept a call from the federal government again.
This makes zero sense.
So a child presents at the border. They have a phone number and a name of a person here in the United States.
Well, how did they get that?
Well, they were telling us they get it in route.
But they hand that to our fine border patrol as what's called the US point of contact.
Right.
So that US point of contact; in 72 hours border patrol has to give the child to HHS.
And our goal was to in 10 to 14 days to deliver the child to the US point of contact.
That's what we were using as a sponsor.
So, I don't think people realize that in 2 weeks children were being delivered to people here in the United States who never
had to ever pick up a phone call again from the government.
We turn custody over. That's it.
Bye! Good luck with that. It's unbelievable!
We would never treat American children this way.
And I don't know why we are treating migrant children this way.
: Yeah. I'm going to say something that's going to sound flippant, and I don't mean it be. But, I mean it to be very pointed.
There are places in this country where you cannot do a dog adoption without greater background check and follow up.
And I mean this literally. I mean, I know this first-hand.
You go to a pet dog adoption event, you have to fill forms out, you have to present ID. They check you, they interview you.
You know, you get the dog and then there is a home visit.
And, I mean literally, this goes on.
We have a greater concern and awareness and a mechanism for double/checking on the health and welfare of a dog.
And I am a dog lover.
So, I get it. I'm not complaining about that.
But just, to me, the disparity in treatment is so... it is so recklessly crazy on the part of HHS.
I mean, there is no excuse, there is no explanation for this.
: Yeah, there's no explanation except that it's a multi-billion dollar operation annually.
Let's stick with that.
I want to... let's talk about the money.
This is a money operation.
Look, one way or another, again, overly simplistic, but, they are selling kids, okay?
This is a... They're a commodity, and there's money changing hands, and there's... they are
the item, the contraband that is being moved.
Who is making money out of this? Who?
Well, lots of contractors and NGOs are making millions and millions of dollars a year.
: And so, I mean... we'll walk through the mechanics of this a little bit, just to give people an idea of how it happens:
But they cross the border, they get picked up.
Well, who picks them up?
Sometimes it's border patrol, but sometimes the border patrol just gathers people together and they send a bus or a minivan.
Well, guess what! That bus or minivan is from some bus or transportation company.
They are not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.
They got a government contract to run buses between point A and B or between reception center A and processing center C.
But it is a bus service.
And they're running I don't know, 10 to 20 buses a day.
More than that.
I'm just saying in one stretch of ground, right?
These are huge transportation contracts: Buses, minibuses, etc. but also to include airfare later.
And then there are these NGOs, that's just sort of a generic expression for non-governmental organization but frankly
and I'm I'm sad or sorry to admit this: very often they're church-affiliated organizations and they found a way...
I mean, they're probably... their hearts started out being in the in the right place they
want to help people God bless them that's great
But it turned into a money-making operation for them.
And there are both secular and church-related NGOs.
Some of them started out as doers trying to help people. Some of them frankly are in it for a buck.
But again they're getting paid like almost per head, fees for handling and processing for these
people - and that's exactly where the money is.
That's where there's an enormous expenditure we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars.
Yes! Hundreds of millions, monthly.
That's the thing what I think some people just can't fathom is that the contract where I was for the
site that I was at it was over 100 million a month.
No one is thinking, "Wow. I'm just going to expose that my agency or my contractor is
getting all this money and trafficking the kids."
Right....
Pardon!
Not at all, no worries!
So this is a big, big business.
Then there's.... I mean, then there's I mean that's sort of the overt governmental contracting expense and costs.
And the folks on the left would scream: "Well, what do you want to do, just leave them out in the desert to die?"
I think that's kind of a false choice argument - noone would advocate that.
But there's also on the back end of it, there is a clandestine underground criminal money-making off operation
And that's really at the point where the government loses control.
Right? Once they turn these kids over to who knows who, then you're talking about sex trafficking you're talking about child
labor you're talking about any number of insanely weird criminal perverse things that could be done
to abuse and manipulate and exploit young people.
and that entire dark side of the of the business the clandestine criminal activity God knows
how much money's involved there no one knows.
Yes, yes. And Chris, we are separating the children from their families and their home country.
Right.
That's the thing that people just don't understand.
Originally, the program - I mean, the "commander's intent" - that's what we talk about.
What is the purpose ultimately of this program?
I believe it was family reunification, and the people who initially thought of this
program said, "Well, this is family reunification.
That's not what's happening now.
Hannah Dreier of the New York Times revealed that as a result of her data - looking at the data in some zip
codes, less than 10 % of the kids are going to their parents.
This is not a "family reunion".
This is a large criminal operation!
Children are put into sweatshops.
Children are being put into sex slavery. They said so themselves.
Children three years later... because Anthony Rubin of Muckraker actually tracked down children who three
years later were saying, "Look, I'm still in debt bondage.
I still owe money to the person ... who paid for me to be smuggled here....
Three years later, these children still owe money.
It's unbelievable what's happening here!
Yeah. And Chris, I think that's the thing that people just don't understand or maybe have never conceived
in their mind what a sick person will do to a child.
Right.
And that's been, I think, one of the most horrible things that...
That I've had to look into this darkness and be like, "Oh my Goodness, there are people who do this."
But there are doctors and nurses who I've spoken to personally.
I mean, they're... you know, through tears, they're like, "Tara, there was a
seven-year-old little girl, and she had all these STDs."
Right.
I mean, people don't understand what evil people will do to children.
And we've released them to a criminal element.
Right.
I would encourage people to look at the documents that Senator Grassley revealed to the public on July 11th .
You can go on his, you know, on his press releases and they can see this government
knowingly gave children to MS-13 affiliates . Okay?
These are bad criminal actors. Why would we be giving them children?
They are known members of transnational criminal organizations.
This is, this is beyond belief.
And honestly, Chris, had I not seen this with my own eyes, I could not be that the federal
government has become the white glove delivery service.
I mean, literally the middleman of a child trafficking operation.
Yeah, they're running it.
I mean, it's not even that they are somehow involved. They're running it.
They are executing the plan to move and abuse these kids. It's their game.
Yes.
It's their operation.
Yeah. And separating them from their families back home, you know, by luring them. That's what trafficking is.
It's force, fraud or coercion.
Right.
So, the child and the parents, because the kids told us this.
Right.
You know, people can have their talking points.
We've looked, and I've looked into the eyes of frightened children.
I know because of what the kids have told me and told other people.
And there are reports with the testimony of the kids.This cannot be denied.
The children were saying: "You know, well, I was only making 2 dollars and 50 cents a day back home in Guatemala."
"But the trafficker here in Texas told me that if I leave home, I'm going to be able to
come here to the US and make 6 dollars an hour."
The child and the parents believe that the kid is going to be Elon Musk rich.
Right.
Going from 2 dollars and 50 cents a day to 6 dollars an hour.
And, you know, it's just unthinkable that we're luring vulnerable populations.
And out of Guatemala, it's indigenous children who don't even speak Spanish.
Right.
So, we really need to consider what's happening here.
New policies must be put in place.
People with law enforcement backgrounds need to be able to guard the children.
And HHS must turn over data so children can be found and the criminals can be prosecuted.
We cannot allow this to happen here in the United States to vulnerable children, small children.
It's really unthinkable.
Yeah! We need to prosecute the animals running the networks that do this.
In my opinion, we should prosecute the government officials who made these decisions and caused this to happen.
They're a separate category unto themselves but they need to be held to account as well.
Certainly, the criminal operators doing it need to be prosecuted.
And then we need to recover these poor kids.
The interview with Tara Rodas was conducted in October, 2024, before the re-election of Donald Trump as US President.
After the election, the new Secretary of Health and Human Services under Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., publicly stated in a
cabinet meeting that the Department of Health and Human Services under Biden had made itself
"complicit in child trafficking for sex and slavery".
So, has the tide turned for the better under Trump?
The investigative journalist Ryan Matta is skeptical here.
He has been trying for years to find out where the missing children are and has already made several documentaries about it.
In an interview in May 2025, he expressed his frustration that the Trump administration had not yet brought back
the 300,000 children in question after 100 days in office.
He points out that the government has the cell phone numbers and addresses of the sponsors to whom the children
were referred and that they could easily be tracked down.
He also criticized the government's handling of the Southwest Key programs.
Southwest Key Programs is a large U.S.-based organization operating in several states.
It offers a wide range of services, including refugee accommodation for unaccompanied immigrant minors.
Ryan Matta is convinced that the 30-40 facilities in this program represent the largest of the child trafficking rings.
Horrible things happened there that even Biden's Minister of Justice, Merrick Garland, filed a lawsuit against
these facilities because children were allegedly raped there.
However, Trump's Attorney General Pam Bondi decided very soon after taking office that the lawsuit should be dropped.
This is quite astonishing when you think of the President's announcement of 'draining the swamp'.
Listening to Health Minister Kennedy's statement that his ministry was collaborator to this child sex
trafficking under the previous administration, one has to wonder where the legal investigation is going.
If Tara Rodas says that Kamala Harris presided over the largest human and sex trafficking operation, then she
and those responsible in the Ministry of Health should be investigated as soon as possible.
However, this is not yet in sight.
Trump had already announced during the election campaign before his first presidency that he would put Hillary Clinton in jail.
However, investigations were not even initiated after the election.
In the Epstein scandal, too, the Trump administration has so far failed to deliver the promised investigation and disclosure.
This is not surprising when you consider that many victims and witnesses report that Epstein was not an individual
perpetrator, but that large sections of the political and social establishment were involved in the scandal.
Regarding child trafficking at the US border, the question once more arises if only the smaller criminals are being dealt with in
a media-effective manner, while the big fish, the networks, the NGOs and those involved in
government and ministries are once again left unscathed.
As long as these people are not put behind bars, it must be assumed that the success presented to the public is
merely pulling the wool over the eyes of the population.