Migrants claiming to be traveling as families would undergo DNA testing under a new bill proposed by Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX).

The End Child Trafficking Now Act aims to crack down on fraudulent family asylum claims, and also the practice of ‘recycling’ foreign children by illegal migrants and human traffickers.

“There are one in five cases, according to ICE, of groups of people coming over with children, saying ‘these are our children’ — when they say that, they get preferential treatment through the asylum process — and then we have later found out they are not even related, so the DNA testing helps us to determine if they’re telling the truth or not,” Rep. Gooden told Fox News.

“I believe this should have bipartisan support, 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,” he asserted. “I would be shocked to hear of anyone being opposed to preventing child trafficking, but I’ve been shocked before.”

The issue of child recycling has come into focus amid an unprecedented surge of ‘migrant families’ at the southern border.

In March, former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testified to Congress that her agency had “encountered recycling rings where innocent young people are used multiple times to help aliens gain illegal entry.”

Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan offered similar testimony to the House Oversight Committee last week, revealing that children are effectively being purchased on the black market and used as ‘tickets’ into the U.S.

“Unfortunately we see that all too often now … adults that are bringing children with them that are not their own to try and take advantage of what they perceive as a loophole in our law that would allow them to be released into the United States,” McAleenan said.

“ICE now has three significant cases in multiple cities around the country where they’ve identified a small group of children, maybe 5-8 children, being used by dozens of adults to cross our border seeking release into the United States,” he explained. “We’ve had egregious cases including a 51-year-old man who bought a 6-month child for $80 in Guatemala, and admitted that when confronted with a DNA test by a Homeland Security Investigations agent conducting a pilot at one of our border stations.”



Ilhan Omar voted down a bill that would have stopped barbaric family members from being able to mutilate the genitals of children.

Dan Lyman: Follow @CitizenAnalyst