A pernicious, little-known Obama administration policy – one that that incentivizes adult illegal immigrants to use children as human shields to escape arrest and deportation at the border – largely has escaped the media’s notice.

This same policy is driving the historic surge of children at the border, as everyone from coyotes to illegal immigrant adults already in America seeks to use children to guarantee their safe passage into the country, or to protect them from deportation if they are illegally living here.

The flood of illegal immigrant children, piling up like human debris on the US border, won’t stop until conservatives learn about the obscure Obama administration policy that’s deliberately driving it and reverse it.

Issued in August of 2013, the policy is called the “Family Interest Directive,” and it essentially forbids Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from deporting, arresting or even detaining any illegal immigrant who is the caretaker of a child. That includes parents, legal guardians and even unrelated adults who merely claim they care for the child in question. The theory behind the directive is that it would be morally wrong to separate children from their “caretakers.”

In practice, what that means on the border – and in the interior -- is that if you have a child with you, any child, you won’t be sent home. So suddenly, illegal immigrant children are a hot commodity. Unrelated adults and coyotes use them for border crossings, then abandon them at the border. Parents who in the past would have left their children behind, crossed the border and then sent money home are now bringing them along for protection from deportation. And parents and family members already in the country who showed little interest in housing and caring for these children before are now sending for them, in the process forcing these children to take terrible risks as they travel alone along the way. If they make it to the border, they end up in the hands of the US government for safe-keeping until they can be reunited with parents and relatives.

Two other measures, Obama’s 2012 executively ordered “Dream Act” amnesty and a 2008 law that forbids the federal government from immediately deporting illegal immigrant children from countries other than Mexico, have gotten the lion’s share of the media attention by those attempting to explain what is driving this crisis. But it wasn’t until the issuing of the Family Interest Directive in August 2013 that the floodgates opened.

The Department of Homeland Security says the unprecedented deluge of 52,000 unaccompanied minors began in October. That’s just two months after the directive was issued.

In a leaked federal government report obtained by Breitbart, illegal immigrants overwhelmingly say they came because of policies forbidding those accompanied by children from being turned away.

“Of the 230 total migrants interviewed, 219 cited the primary reason for migrating to the United States was the perception of U.S. immigration laws granting free passes or permisos to UAC and adult female OTMs traveling with minors.” 

The policy those illegal immigrants are referring to is the Family Interest Directive. So far, though, the media have failed to note the connection to the directive, which is easily the most destructive one of Obama’s federal immigration law executive “re-writes” – both for the country, and for illegal immigrant children themselves.

“Word has gotten out that if a mother comes with her children, she’ll be given a ‘permiso’ and released,” says Rosemary Jenks, Director of Government Relations at NumbersUSA, of what she’s hearing at the border. “The word has gotten back to Central America and [has led to] the renting of children to get adults into the country.”

CBS Channel 11 news in Dallas-Fort Worth indeed reports a disturbing trend of illegal border crossers “renting” children to cross with. “As far as I know they pay the families (and remember these economies are in sad shape) and therefore to get maybe a few hundred dollars you’re willing to give up your 7th or 8th child,” George Grayson, a Professor of Latin American Politics at William & Mary, tells CBS.

The price these children pay for Obama’s policy is often horrific.

“Officials at Lackland Air Force Base told us that one-third of young girls that come across – and they were just like little babies; 10, 11, 14 years of age. That about one third of them get raped and/or abused on the way here,” CBS reports.

Some come with parents who use them as a guarantee of safe passage. But thousands more are dumped at the border when they are no longer needed – or worse, in the case of the 11-year-old recently found dead on the Texas side of the border. It’s why tens of thousands of unattended children are suddenly turning up there. Or, they are sent for by relatives here looking to use them as a shield against deportation.

When the directive was issued, the Obama administration sold it as a protection for illegal immigrant families, whose children might be left hiding in the shadows alone if mom or dad were scooped up and deported.

That sounds compassionate, but there’s proof the Obama administration deliberately designed the policy to cause the flood of children, because the federal government clearly anticipated that tens of thousands of children would be abandoned into government care at the border. With uncanny accuracy, the Obama administration estimated almost exactly the number of children that would be used, discarded and need care. Why else, in January, would the federal government solicit bids for contractors to care for 65,000 “unaccompanied alien children?”

The Obama administration, in essence, has become a party to the deliberate trafficking of children for profit and shows no sign of ending the practice, no matter how horrifically these children are victimized.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob HYPERLINK "http://www.examiner.com/article/new-obama-directive-warns-ice-not-to-arrest-or-deport-illegal-immigrant-parents"Goodlatte was one of the few to see this coming when he warned that the directive would have devastating consequences last year.

“President Obama has once again abused his authority and unilaterally refused to enforce our current immigration laws by directing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to stop removing broad categories of unlawful immigrants,” Goodlatte said.

It’s critical for conservatives who want to regain control of the border and dam Obama’s monstrous flood to understand that the president’s executive Dream Act for minors,  which would be harder to dislodge, particularly in the court of public opinion, isn’t the main force driving this.

Demanding that a simple law enforcement directive be reversed because it is physically harming those same children, who are being sold into bondage, is a far easier task politically. All it would take is the issuing of another memo reversing the policy and much of the flood would halt almost immediately.

Congressional conservatives and activists must demand that this bureaucratic amnesty for adults accompanied by children end immediately, before more small bodies pile up in the desert.

Tara Servatius is the host of Charleston, SC’s Morning Radio News Show on 1250 WTMA. Follow her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TaraServatiusOnline?hc_location=timeline