Biden-Harris admin loses track of 320,000 migrant children — with untold numbers at risk of sex trafficking and forced labor
The Biden-Harris administration has lost track of more than 320,000 migrant children who crossed the border without parents, according to a shocking new report.
Untold numbers of the children — who were released into the U.S. to “qualified sponsors” — are now at risk of sex trafficking, forced labor, and other forms of exploitation, a Homeland Security Inspector General’s report released Monday said.
As of May 2024, 291,000 migrant children arrived in the U.S. as unaccompanied minors who were set free and never given a date to appear in immigration court — meaning there is no way to track their whereabouts.
That is in addition to the 32,000 children that Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities released into the US with hearing dates but then failed to show in court, according to the 14-page report — which tracked a period from October 2018 to September 2023.
One federal whistleblower said that she believes many of these vulnerable kids could already be in the hands of criminals and sex traffickers.
Tara Rodas, who was recruited as a federal government employee to help the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with an influx of migrant kids in 2021, believed she would be doing noble work. However, she told The Post she was shocked to find she was handing those children to “traffickers, members of transnational criminal organizations, bad actors, bad, bad, bad people.”
When migrants cross the border illegally as children and are apprehended by border agents, they are released to HHS, which helps them connect with their sponsor in the U.S.
That sponsor doesn’t have to be a family member, and during the vetting process, sponsors are never required to meet with HHS officials in person. The vetting is typically done over the phone, said Rodas.
“At the very beginning of the Biden administration, they stripped all the vetting out of the process,” Rodas said.
Rodas told a House panel last month that one case she saw involved a 16-year-old migrant girl who was a sponsored who claimed to be her older brother.
“He was touching her inappropriately. It was clear her sponsor was not her brother,” Rodas said, noting that the girl “looked drugged” and as if “she was for sale” on her sponsor’s social media postings.
Some non-family sponsors have even been found to be sponsoring multiple children released by HHS, which Rodas described as a “red flag.”
Hundreds of such cases were reported in 2023, where it was found that 344 unaccompanied migrant kids released by the Biden administration were living with non-family sponsors who were hosting at least three migrant children, according to NBC News.
Dr. Jason Piccolo, a retired federal agent who blew the whistle in 2015 on the government releasing unaccompanied children to potential criminals, said the latest revelations about the missing children are “deeply concerning.”
Some of the children the federal government has released into the US are working in exploitative conditions in slaughterhouses and factories, according to multiple media reports.
“There needs to be an immediate standard operating procedure put in place to track the status and whereabouts of every single unaccompanied migrant child across all involved agencies,” said Piccolo.
“One child lost to trafficking is one too many. This systemic failure demands immediate attention and reform to ensure the safety of all children in our care,” Piccolo added.
Rodas also said the children themselves are not “vetted,” and she’s seen cases of adults fraudulently claiming they’re minors going through the process.
Over a period of less than six months, Rodas observed dozens of such cases.
“It’s fraud on the part of the adult pretending to be the unaccompanied child, but it’s also fraud on the part of the sponsor attempting to sponsor them. This is very serious.”
Only one of eight audited ICE offices “attempted to locate” the missing migrant kids, according to the government watchdog report.
“Nobody at DHS is actually looking,” said Rodas.
Tragic cases of migrant crime in the U.S. have also been tied to illegal migrant children released by the federal government to sponsors.
One of those was an MS-13 gang member who allegedly brutally raped and killed Kayla Hamilton, a young autistic woman in Maryland, in July of 2022.
Her mother, Tammy Nobles, has blamed HHS for “operational neglect” that “further sealed my daughter’s fate.”
At the border, federal authorities failed to check the alleged killer for gang tattoos and also failed to call counterparts in his home country of El Salvador, she testified to Congress in January.
“Had they done so, El Salvador government officials would have confirmed that the assailant was a known MS-13 gang member with a prior criminal history,” she said at the time.
HHS employees later “neglected and recklessly failed to verify a legitimate family member of the assailant or sponsor before allowing him to enter U.S. soil,” Nobles said, adding that HHS “allowed the MS-13 gang member, as a minor, to rent a room in a trailer park from another individual who was also an illegal immigrant.”
(The above segment was written by Jennie Taer and published Aug. 21, 2024, by The New York Post)
On Aug. 19, the DHS published a 14-page report revealing more than 32,000 unaccompanied children did not attend their immigration hearings between the fiscal years of 2019 and 2023.
What’s more, nearly 300,000 of these kids that came across the southern border alone never even got a court date whatsoever.
Essentially, Border Patrol doesn’t have anything to do with these young children. Instead, ICE retains the responsibility to walk through the immigration process with these children.
Here’s How the Biden/Harris Process For These Children Works
They are what the government calls “unaccompanied children.” They show up at the U.S. Southern Border without parents, are placed with “sponsors” in the U.S. while they wait to find out whether they can stay – and the government often lets them fall through the cracks. While the Department of Health & Human Services is responsible for placing the children with “sponsors” as they wait for their deportation hearings to be set, the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General said it has lost track of 32,000 Illegal Immigrant Children who failed to show up for their hearings – and they rarely bother to look for “unaccompanied children.”
“Based on our audit work and according to ICE officials, UCs who do not appear for court are considered at higher risk for trafficking, exploitation or forced labor.”
- Nearly 300,000 other children still haven’t been given immigration court summonses, said the Inspector General’s report.
- It has lost track of of them after the children and their “sponsors” stopped replying.
- That works out to two-thirds of the children U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement has failed to serve.
- The report says ICE, the Homeland Security agency charged with putting the children through their deportation hearings, doesn’t follow up either.
The man accused of that killing entered as a juvenile and was released to a sponsor despite having ties to MS-13 in El Salvador, according to Congressional Investigators.
Inspector General Cuffari said the number of children who didn’t appear for their scheduled court dates, 32,000, “may have been much larger” had ICE issued the immigration summons, or notice to appear, to the 291,000 other children unserved as of May.
He said ICE gave several explanations for its bungles.Its legal division, which prosecutes cases in immigration court, doesn’t automatically notify Enforcement & Removal Operations, the deportation division, after a child fails to show up.The legal division admitted to investigators that its data was “unreliable.”ICE also doesn’t alert HHS when the children don’t show up – and says it lacks a formal policy for following up on those cases.
The children are considered the toughest immigration cases. Many have been been sent to lacations across the United States to reunite with parents living illegally in the U.S. Others are gang members sent north to help with criminal operations in America.
Their numbers began ticking up under President Obama – and have exploded under President Biden.
- Roughly 68,000 were caught and released in fiscal 2019, and
- just 15,128 were caught and released in 2020, the last full year under President Trump.
- Nearly 366,000 were caught and went to HHS during Mr. Biden’s frst three years.
ICE’s docket has more than 7 million migrants at large, and are not being tracked by a monitoring device.
In responsde to the report, HHS said it had created an email inbox for ICE to send alerts when a child failed to attend a deportation hearing. When the inspector general asked ICE about it, an official couldn’t say how often, or even whether, deportation officers used it.
In its official response to the report, ICE said it was sending a note to alert its personnel to start using the mailbox.
Summary
Wait a minute: Haven’t we been led to believe the Biden/Harris Administration is the administration that puts the lives of every American, every migrant — especially every migrant child — in their “most important” category? Haven’t they consistently maintained they know what’s best for EVERY migrant, no matter their age, race, ethnicity, or nation of origin?
Reading the above synopsis is chilling to me, and should be shuddering to every American. Please remember this: all of the above information that was “given” to journalists by the Biden/Harris Administration was not the product of independent investigative journalists. It was carefully crafted by the Biden/Harris Administration and given to several news outlets who have NO way to verify if any or all of this is true!
The Office of Health and Human Services refuses to transfer our numerous calls to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. They take a message. But in six weeks with a daily call, no one will speak to us, and no message has been returned.
If these were missing “migrant” adults, it would still be a critical matter. But, there might be reasonable answers to why their “missing” was not horrible. But these are children!
Why the Biden/Harris Administration has not made this the most important illegal immigration matter is beyond comprehension. Think about this one thing that is applicable to all this: God Himself when instructing Chrisitans in the New Testament Church about how to treat their fellow Christians stated “this” was the two most important considerations for those Christians: “Take care of the widows and the children!”
The inability of the Biden/Harris “experts” to keep count of how many unaccompanied minors have come across the border, transferred to various people, NGO’s, and agencies, and/or placed with families or foster homes further proves to this American that this Administration is more evil than I ever thought was possible!
