In a pilot program, approximately 30% of rapid DNA tests of immigrant adults who were suspected of arriving at the southern border with children who weren't theirs revealed the adults were not related to the children, an official involved in the system's temporary rollout who asked to be anonymous in order to speak freely told the Washington Examiner Friday.

If there is any doubt about the scope of how children are being used as pawns in the migrant surge, take a look at this story from the Washington Examiner :

"There's been some concern about, 'Are they stepfathers or adopted fathers?'" the official said. "Those were not the case. In these cases, they are misrepresented as family members."

So all those treacly media stories coming out in the media about "families" at the border partaking in the migrant surge, and all the leftist outrage about "separated families" and "caged children," were fake news.

As a matter of fact, a huge number of these migrant surgers were never families at all — just children in the hands of strangers who found it in their interest to use those kids as fodder to game the immigration system and avoid detention for crossing illegally. Kids are such convenient chits, and what small kid is going to be able to stop it? The glurge about the whole thing has never stopped. What happens to the kids after these people are released to walk about the country before skipping their immigration court hearing is anyone's guess. The media certainly aren't going to follow up on those stories.

Child-trafficking? Quite likely a lot of it. Rent-a-kids? These results suggest that the "recycling" of children by border smugglers is more widespread than reported.

Here's the other thing, which is implied in the Examiner report and certainly something I have read elsewhere: the FNA tests on the migrant "families" were voluntary. One third of the volunteers flunked. The report says many others refused to take the tests. The refusers very likely refused because they knew they would be found out, which would mean the phony-family rate is north of a third, depending on how many migrants told the Border Patrol no.

This suggests human-trafficking on a massive scale, with children the convenient pawns, based on the incentives offered from our asylum system and the U.S. policy of releasing illegal border-crossers with kids into the interior of the country. Let that happen, and most every would-be illegal will seek to put a kid on his hip, often by foul means.

For the kids, this has got to be a lousy bargain — if not an open highway to genuine child abuse. Imagine the terror the kids must feel coming into a foreign country in the "care" of a stranger.

Democrats have brought us this, based on their incentivization of family crossers in a flawed asylum system, which has led them to come in droves, and in their refusal to reform any part of this outrageously game-able asylum system. There must be child-trafficking on a massive scale going on with this law. Democrats can start answering questions now about why they think incentivizing child-trafficking and making those "caged children" into the pawns of cartel drug-smugglers is such a fine thing.

Image credit: CBS News screen shot via shareable YouTube.