COLUMBUS—The former National Youth Advocate Program social worker convicted of sex crimes with a 13-year-old has relinquished her social work license. Ohio.news reported on the National Youth Advocate Program’s role in facilitating immigrant resettlement in Ohio and elsewhere.
The group has collected hundreds of millions in government grants for resettling immigrants — under the shadow of a Senate investigation into human trafficking.
Payton Shires was accused of sex crimes against a 13-year-old, apparently under the group’s care, and evidently fired a gun at the victim’s residence.
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WCMH reported that Columbus police said Shires, 24, was “formerly employed with the National Youth Advocate Program,” though it was unclear whether she was fired as part of a police investigation or beforehand. Shires has relinquished her social work license as of this week.
Ohio.news reported on the group’s government grants tallying in the hundreds of millions, its $8 million in forgiven Paycheck Protection Program loans, embattled CEO Marvena Twigg’s $1.27 million salary, and a $900,000 exit package for the group’s previous leader, Mubarak Awad.
The National Youth Advocate Program collected hundreds of millions in government grants under DHS’ failed Unaccompanied Children program.
In February, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) demanded Twigg and the National Youth Advocate Program comply with a Senate investigation into the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
“The National Youth Advocate Program, Inc. (NYAP) has received 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,” Grassley’s letter to Twigg and NYAP said.
Grassley’s call for accountability to Twigg and NYAP and a dozen or so other grant recipients came on the heels of a letter Grassley sent to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and FBI Director Christopher Wray, alerting them to trafficking on the border and government oversight failures.
NYAP was among a dozen or so contractors contacted by Grassley’s office. His investigation, aided by federal whistleblowers, has now said this month that the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which administers grants that NYAP and others received, “ignored warnings” that children were being trafficked.
According to Iowa newspaper The Gazette, Grassley called out “glaring failures by President Joe Biden’s administration over its handling of unaccompanied migrant children at the southern border for lacking proper vetting of foreign nationals, leading to exploitation and abuse of children.”
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