The Trump administration has located 13,000 children who crossed the border unaccompanied under President Joe Biden, the Department of Homeland Security announced Friday.
Under the Biden administration, about 300,000 unaccompanied alien children were either “lost” or placed with sponsors that were not adequately vetted, and some were “allowed to be placed with sponsors who were actually smugglers and sex traffickers,” according to DHS.
“The evil of human trafficking cannot be overstated. It’s modern-day slavery,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement. “By leaving our borders open and even encouraging people to come here illegally, Biden enabled the largest human trafficking operation in modern history.”
In March, the Department of Health and Human Services found 65,000 reports of unaccompanied alien children that had gone unaddressed under the previous administration, according to DHS.
Now, HHS is digging into these reports, which has resulted “in more than 4,000 investigative leads, including fraud, human trafficking, and other criminal activity,” DHS reports.
“We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to eradicate human trafficking operations targeting the United States,” Noem says. “Under the leadership of President Donald Trump, and working together at every level of government, we can win this fight. And we will.”
DHS has found and rescued multiple unaccompanied migrant children since the start of the Trump administration, including a pregnant 14-year-old girl in Texas who was residing with an adult male sponsor who she was not related to. The man was later determined to be the father of the unborn child.
In June, Homeland Security Investigations Nashville found a child who was the victim, along with her 18-year-old brother, of labor trafficking. During court proceedings, it was discovered that the girl and her brother had been “forced by their sponsor to work to pay off their smuggling fees and to pay the sponsor’s household expenses,” according to DHS.
During a recent House Oversight subcommittee hearing, DHS inspector general Joseph Cuffari told members of Congress that between fiscal years 2019 and 2023, more than 448,000 unaccompanied alien children were transferred from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody to the custody of HHS.
Among the 448,000 minors to enter the U.S. in recent years, ICE failed to issue more than 233,000 notices to appear in immigration court, according to the inspector general. Furthermore, more than 43,000 migrant children who were given a notice to appear in immigration court failed to do so.
Working with other federal law enforcement agencies, the ICE and DHS team has knocked on about 50,000 doors of sponsors who were listed as sponsoring two or more illegal-alien children.
“From what we understand, they were able to identify and physically locate 12,000 unaccompanied alien children,” Cuffari said, adding that “about 400” sponsors have been arrested following the home visits.
“President Trump and Secretary Noem take the responsibility to protect children seriously and will continue to work with federal law enforcement to reunite children with their families,” according to DHS.
