Cherokee Federal, a business arm of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, was awarded a contract worth $706 million to care for unaccompanied children who are illegal immigrants. U.S. Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is requesting responsive information from 23 contractors and grantees, including Cherokee Federal. Cherokee Federal says it “has responded to all of Senator Grassley’s requests for information.” Grassley’s office says Cherokee Federal has “not responded to all of our requests for information.”

 

Cherokee Federal, a business arm of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is among 23 entities that are the focus of a child-trafficking inquiry conducted by U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Grassley’s investigation follows a whistleblower report that identified Cherokee Federal as an entity that had, at least indirectly, facilitated child trafficking of illegal immigrants younger than 18.

A spokesman for Cherokee Federal said the organization “has responded to all of Senator Grassley’s requests for information,” but Cherokee Federal did not provide a requested copy of that response.

A spokesman for Grassley’s office said officials with Cherokee Federal have “not responded to all of our requests for information” and that the organization has failed to fully respond for roughly one year now.

When Grassley sent a letter restating his request for information on March 10 this year, a spokesman for Grassley’s office said Cherokee Federal “acknowledged receipt through counsel, but nothing further has been supplied since then.”

Cherokee Federal Helps Process Illegal Immigrants

Grassley’s investigation focuses on entities that received contracts from the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “to provide unaccompanied migrant children with basic goods and services and vet adult sponsors through screenings, background checks, verification of the sponsor’s relationship to the child and home visits.”

In a letter sent on March 10, 2025, to Steven Bilby, president of Cherokee Federal, Grassley wrote, “Last year, during the Biden administration, I referred contractor records to federal law enforcement documenting the placement of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) with suspicious sponsors, in situations that indicated likely trafficking, smuggling, and child exploitation. These files proved beyond any doubt that HHS under the Biden Administration failed to protect these children from possible harm. The information in these files was so serious and the vetting failures so widespread that Homeland Security Investigations identified over a hundred sponsor targets for further investigation from only one HHS-contracted facility. After a thorough investigation of these records, I sent an urgent inquiry to two dozen organizations, including yours, that have provided care for, or services related to, UACs in the custody of HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). The purpose of my inquiry is clear: to determine the scope and severity of the problem nationwide and it dates back at least a decade. The organizations within the scope of my review have received over $9.3 billion in combined taxpayer funding from HHS and yet have chosen not to fully respond to Congress. I won’t accept further delay while children are at risk.”

Grassley warned officials with Cherokee Federal that as “a recipient of taxpayer money, your organization has an obligation to turn over responsive information and the failure to do so is obstruction.”

In his original, Feb. 21, 2024, letter to Cherokee Federal, Grassley wrote, “Cherokee Federal has received hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to support ORR over the past few years, and so it must provide an accounting to Congress and the American people for its handling of migrant children entrusted to its care.

“My office has been informed through legally protected whistleblower disclosures, including contractor records, showing children were sponsored without proper vetting or care, and at addresses that may be part of possible child-trafficking rings,” Grassley continued. “Shockingly, children were placed by HHS and one of its contractors even where they were notified of likely MS-13 gang affiliation in the household.”

A footnote to Grassley’s Feb. 21, 2024, letter noted that Cherokee Federal was awarded a single source contract “to provide the full complement of services necessary to care for UC [unaccompanied alien children] in ORR [Office of Refugee Resettlement] custody including direct care and supervision, intake processing, clothing, hygiene kits, interior security, case management and medical service[es].” The contract shows obligated amounts to Cherokee Federal equaling $706,894,848.17, which includes $267,724,693.37 of COVID-19 funding.

Grassley noted that a report released by HHS’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) “found children were released to sponsors before FBI fingerprint or state child abuse and neglect registry checks were completed and that nearly 1 in 5 of those files were never updated with the results. In one in six cases, one or more required sponsor safety checks either weren’t conducted or documented. And even more troubling, in more than a third of cases, HHS and its contractors didn’t ensure sponsor-provided identity documents were fully legible.”

Grassley Requested a Wide Range of Information

Grassley asked officials with Cherokee Federal to provide a range of information, including a full list of facilities or services for unaccompanied alien children that Cherokee Federal supported, and a full listing of “services related to identifying and vetting sponsors and transporting children to their custody.”

Grassley also asked Cherokee Federal to provide in writing its policies and procedures for performing background checks on its employees with access to minor children and “unredacted copies of all contracts between Cherokee Federal” and the U.S. government related to the care of unaccompanied alien children.

Grassley requested a copy of all communications or records “of any kind” between Cherokee Federal and HHS that discussed or referenced “in any way” the length of a migrant child’s stay at any facility, “the need to more quickly process any UACs, instructions from HHS related in any way to the timing of UAC placement, transportation, or processing, or the need to expedite or omit any aspect of UAC care or processing, including, but not limited to, fingerprinting, background checks, mental or physical health evaluations, public record searches, sex offender registry checks, or home studies.”

The senator also asked Cherokee Federal officials to “describe your process for identifying and vetting UAC sponsors,” and to “list and detail all instances where any UAC was placed” with a sponsor “without fingerprints being requested or received and/or the required background check being completed.”

Grassley further asked Cherokee Federal to provide a list “of all children under your care who had or expressed, or where any HHS or contractor employee noted in any way, any actual or potential mental or physical disability of any sort, any actual or potential physical or sexual abuse of any kind, or where there was any indication of the potential sponsor actually or potentially presenting a risk of abuse, maltreatment, exploitation or trafficking, along with records documenting the outcome for each child …”

Grassley also asked Cherokee Federal to “describe in detail how documents provided by potential sponsors are processed and verified as authentic, as well as any training for identifying fraudulent documents and verifying family relationships.”

He asked Cherokee Federal to identify any instances in which its employees “identified potential criminal activity, including potential cases of human trafficking,” involving a child sponsor.

“For each instance, please note whether potential criminal activity or signs of potential trafficking were referred to law enforcement and other appropriate government officials, and if so, to whom,” Grassley wrote.

The senator also requested organizational charts for Cherokee Federal for the past five years and asked Cherokee Federal to identify the individuals at Cherokee Federal responsible for overseeing government contracts related to unaccompanied illegal immigrant children.

Cherokee Federal Denies Whistleblower’s Accusation

In July 2024, a whistleblower told members of the U.S. Senate that unaccompanied minors who illegally entered the United States were being released to child traffickers and that Cherokee Federal had facilitated those actions.

“Make no mistake: Children were not going to their parents. They were being trafficked with billions of taxpayer dollars by a contractor failing to vet sponsors and process children safely with government officials complicit in it,” said Deborah White, a career worker at the federal General Services Administration who was lent in May 2021 to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement (HHSORR).

White addressed a roundtable of U.S. senators on July 9, 2024, led by U.S. Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Grassley.

White repeatedly criticized Cherokee Federal, the non-governmental organization that received the federal contract to run the Pomona, Calif., processing site where she temporarily worked.

“Cherokee Federal staffed the site with several unqualified, unvetted, and quite frankly dangerous contractors with access to vulnerable children that did not get the appropriate support, services or humanity that they deserved after a most treacherous journey,” White said. “I have seen these children. I have interviewed these children. And I have stories that will haunt me for the rest of my life. The HHSORR program is the biggest failure in government history that I have ever witnessed. Despite raising case after case of trafficking, HHSORR leadership and the contractor allowed children to be trafficked on their watch and the taxpayers continue to fund it.”

She said government and Cherokee Federal officials prioritized swift processing rather than the well-being of children.

“Repeatedly, the program prioritized speed over safety,” White said. “HHSORR and Cherokee Federal, the prime contractor, created a ‘strike team’ to remove children faster, ignoring warnings that came from case managers that children were being trafficked.”

During the hearing, White told lawmakers the exploitation of child migrants is a severe problem—and taxpayer money is helping facilitate those crimes through contracts with non-governmental organizations.

“Children continue to be trafficked into America, and we are paying for it,” White said. “Please understand, this is taxpayer-funded child slavery, sanctioned by our government and brought to you by NGOs like Cherokee Federal.”

Cherokee Federal is a business arm of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. A brochure for Cherokee Federal states, “Cherokee Nation is the sole owner of Cherokee Nation Businesses—the independent, board-governed company that operates Cherokee Federal’s group of tribally owned LLCs.”

The Cherokee Federal brochure states that “37% of the profits from our government contracting programs are distributed back to Cherokee Nation’s general fund,” and says that profit “creates an unrestricted pool of funds” for tribal officials.

Officials with the Cherokee Nation and Cherokee Federal have previously denied wrongdoing.

Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr., sent a July 15, 2024, letter to Grassley and U.S. Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma City, that was also shared with Tulsa’s CBS affiliate, in which Hoskin called the whistleblower statements made about Cherokee Federal “shameful, sickening, and unequivocally false.”

“The Cherokee Nation and its subsidiary entities have not and would never traffic children,” Hoskin wrote.

Steven Bilby, president of Cherokee Federal, similarly issued a statement to Tulsa’s CBS-affiliate News on 6 calling the testimony “outrageously false.”

[Photo credit: United States Senate Press Photographers' Gallery]