This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Members of Congress are accusing Joe Biden's Health and Human Services secretary, Xavier Becerra, the pro-abortion former attorney general in California, of concealing the gang affiliations of illegal aliens who are minors and are caught committing serious crimes.
Officials with the House Judiciary Committee have subpoenaed him for the case files of "unaccompanied alien children who have been charged with committing crimes while in the United States after being released by HHS."
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the chairman of the committee investigating those crimes and criminals, said the committee had requested some HHS case files for criminal aliens "charged with serious and violent crimes."
Those charges included offenses like theft, brutal assault, and murder.
The committee, since June 2023, has followed up on its requests on several occasions and tried to engage with HHS in good faith, but officials in Biden's agency have "stonewalled" members and "baselessly" withheld case files.
"As an extraordinary accommodation to HHS, the committee agreed to review the case file materials in camera but when committee staff members started going through the paperwork, "It became clear that HHS had applied pervasive redactions to the documents."
"Across multiple case files, HHS redacted information about whether specific UACs had 'identifying scars, marks, or tattoos' – information that can be indicative of gang affiliations," the congressional committee reported.
"Worse, HHS went so far as to redact information explicitly requested by the committee, including information shared with HHS by other agencies and immigration case history information."
That means, the committee confirmed, the information provided to Congress was "all but useless."
And that obstructed the investigation, the report said.
Jordan's letter to Becerra explained the information is needed for Congress' constitutionally ordained oversight of the HHS.
It's needed because HHS has released into the U.S. unvetted UACs, who … committed heinous criminal acts."
The letter notes there is "no constitutional or legal basis" for the information to be withheld.
Court rulings have "been clear that "Congress's power to legislate includes the authority to acquire information to inform such legislation," it explained.
