The secretary of homeland security told members of Congress on Wednesday that her agency had uncovered "recycling rings" where children were used multiple times to help undocumented immigrants enter the United States by claiming to be part of a family.

“We have even uncovered ‘recycling rings’ where innocent young people are used multiple times to help aliens gain illegal entry,” Kirstjen Nielsen told the House Homeland Security Committee. “As a nation we simply cannot stand for this. We must fix the system."



Nielsen appeared before the committee to discuss border security, at a time when agents are apprehending a record number of families at the border and the Trump administration is still facing backlash over last summer's "zero tolerance" policy that resulted in the systemic separation of families at the border.

Nielsen did not offer any evidence to back up her assertion and it was unclear how prevalent the so-called recycling rings are. DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokespersons did not provide any specific instances where such activity took place.

Last month, during a White House meeting on human trafficking at the border, Carl McClafferty, associate chief of intelligence at US Border Patrol, described an investigation in Charleston, South Carolina, that included a woman involved in a ring.

The investigation stemmed from authorities noticing that repeat sponsors of family units were for the same person, address, and phone number, McClafferty said. It resulted in indictments that included one woman who said she was being paid $1,500 per child to take children who were not part of an actual family unit back to Guatemala.

"She claimed to do this 13 times, and so we found out they were recycling these children," McClafferty said. "They would bringing them up, smuggling them as part of a family group, recycle them back to Guatemala, put them in another family group, and come back up."

ICE said court proceedings for the case McClafferty mentioned were still ongoing and referred questions to the US Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina, which did not immediately return a request for comment.

