This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

The United States government, under the leadership of Joe Biden, has become a de facto "middleman" in a massive "child trafficking" scheme, according to a damning new report compiled by journalist and Gatestone Institute Senior Fellow Uzay Bulut.

"The criminal practice of trafficking and abusing hundreds of thousands of migrant children who cross the southern border," Bulut writes on the organization's website, "is now, thanks to the open-border policy of the Biden administration, apparently 'normal' inside the U.S."

He cites federal statistics about the millions of illegals encountered at the border in recent years, but pointedly notes that "at least 85,000 children are believed to be missing."

"Many of those children are raped," he explained, "used for forced labor, and forced to undertake brutal jobs ostensibly to 'work off' their debt by the criminal cartels who reportedly now control the Mexican side of the border and brought the children in."

And he cites the comments from whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas, who told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement just weeks ago, "Whether intentional or not, it can be argued that the U.S. government has become the middleman in a large scale, multi-billion-dollar, child trafficking operation run by bad actors seeking to profit off the lives of children."

Rodas, who was with the Health and Human Services bureaucracy under Biden, said, "Today, children will work overnight shifts at slaughterhouses, factories, and restaurants to pay their debts to smugglers and traffickers. Today, children will be sold for sex. Today, children will call a hotline to report they are being abused, neglected, and trafficked....."

She said she had volunteered to help with the crisis at the southern border.

"I thought I was going to help place children in loving homes. Instead, I discovered that children are being trafficked through a sophisticated network that begins with being recruited in the home country, smuggled to the U.S. border, and ends when ORR [Office of Refugee Resettlement] delivers a child to sponsors – some sponsors are criminals and traffickers and members of Transnational Criminal Organizations. Some sponsors view children as commodities and assets to be used for earning income - this is why we are witnessing an explosion of labor trafficking."

Bulut cites other testimony, too, from immigration expert Jessica M. Vaughan.

She said, "Numerous investigative journalism reports published over the years in the Washington Times, Reuters, and the New York Times, Project Veritas, and others, that provide graphic details of the experiences of UACs during and after their illegal crossing and placement with sponsors in the United States, including domestic servitude, sexual abuse, forced labor, labor exploitation, and illegal employment in manufacturing, landscaping, and other inappropriate and dangerous jobs."

And he noted Fox's Rachel Campos-Duffy has reported, "Over the last two years, this country has become an international hub for child trafficking. And the U.S. government is behind it. Under Biden, hundreds of thousands of children have come into this country illegally. Once they get here, most are sold for sex, used for cheap labor, or forced to join gangs. Nobody deserves this. Especially not children."

And he cited comments from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that the Biden administration has created the "largest human smuggling operation in American history," a comment to which Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., also subscribed.

The conclusion of the commentary is that Congress needs to "change the immigration laws and rein in the executive policies that are incentivizing the mass illegal migration."