Cruz lashes out at Biden after report claims Afghan evacuation effort may have opened door to child trafficking

The fallout from the botched withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan is continuing to get worse for President Joe Biden.

A new report from the Associated Press alleges that federal officials are now investigating claims that the “frantic evacuation of desperate Afghans from Kabul” under Biden’s watch may have opened the door to child trafficking.

“U.S. officials at intake centers in the United Arab Emirates and in Wisconsin have identified numerous incidents in which Afghan girls have been presented to authorities as the ‘wives’ of much older men,” the AP reported Friday, citing internal State Department documents.

“Another document, described to the AP by officials familiar with it, says Afghan girls at a transit site in Abu Dhabi have alleged they have been raped by older men they were forced to marry in order to escape Afghanistan,” the report adds.

“An acute human rights crisis”

The development prompted heavy blowback from Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican who called the AP’s report “credible and horrifying,” according to The Daily Wire.

In a statement, Cruz said Biden and others in his administration “imposed arbitrary deadlines for political purposes” and “rushed the evacuation to expedite moving tens of thousands of Afghans into the United States without thoroughly vetting them for security, health, and humanitarian concerns,” as The Daily Wire reported.

“I had called for refugees to remain in safe third countries while they were vetted, but instead, President Biden rushed to bring them to the United States” Cruz added, according to The Daily Wire.

He went on: “It was already clear his reckless decision threatened the security and health of Americans, from concerns over terrorism to evacuees testing positive for COVID-19. Today we learned that President Biden has also imported an acute human rights crisis into the United States.”

“Complicit in child trafficking”

According to The Daily Wire, Cruz said “[e]very Biden–Harris official linked to this disgrace should and must be held accountable.”

“There have been multiple cases of child brides and polygamous families from Afghanistan arriving at military bases here in America as part of their botched evacuation,” the senator said in his statement. “Reports even suggest that some of the exploitation was a direct result of the Biden administration’s chaotic evacuation process, a process that has enabled and incentivized coercion and abuse to the point where Biden Administration officials may well be complicit in child trafficking.”

As the Associated Press notes, “the U.S. has strict policies against human trafficking that include prosecutions for offenders and sanctions for countries that don’t crack down on it.”

But despite pleas from Cruz and others, it seems unlikely that Biden or anyone in his administration will face any real consequences for anything regarding the disaster in Afghanistan.

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