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A 12-year-old who was abused and tortured while held captive before her escape entered the United States as an unaccompanied minor from Honduras.
A U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) official told Fox News that the girl came into the U.S. under the Obama administration in June 2014.
The girl was released to a distant uncle while her mother was living in Honduras. The uncle allegedly began sexually abusing the child before she was taken in by two sisters — Brenda Garcia, 38, and Tania Garcia, 37, Montgomery County residents who allegedly continued the abuse.
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Brenda Garcia, 38, and Tania Garcia, 37, are charged with abusing a young Honduran girl. (Texas Department of Criminal Justice)
The girl said the sisters beat her, starved her, and restrained her. According to court documents, she was bound with zip ties at night and, at times, tied to a chair for “stealing food.”
She also told police that Brenda took nude photos of her and wrapped her hands around her neck, strangling her while saying, “Just die already.”
The girl told detectives she was hit with cables and a belt with a spike on it until she bled. Her mattress was taken away, and she was only allowed to sleep on a tablecloth on the floor while restrained, according to court documents.
The girl eventually escaped her restraints on Sept. 28. She was restrained with zip-ties to a small table and would be beaten whenever she urinated herself while sleeping, court documents state.
Brenda Garcia also allegedly took photos and video of the girl as she showered and would call her names, prosecutors said.
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The sisters face charges including felony injury to a child, unlawful restraint, and invasive visual recording.
Former President Donald Trump has blamed the Biden administration for allowing unaccompanied children to cross the border without a tougher vetting process for sponsors.
“Hundreds of thousands were lost through Biden and the Biden administration,” he said last week. “We are getting a lot of them back, but they’re either dead, slaves, or captured. But think about it — hundreds of thousands we’re talking about — and they came in through the border, sold, bargained for. This was all Biden. Meaning Biden and Obama — the same mentality.”
During the Obama administration in 2014, there was a massive surge in unaccompanied children.
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Between 2013 and 2014, the number of unaccompanied children apprehended at the border increased nearly 80%, from 38,759 in fiscal year 2013 to 68,541 in fiscal year 2014.