(LifeSiteNews) — An anti-trafficking activist shared during a recent congressional hearing that 65,000 calls to a help hotline for unaccompanied minors went unanswered during the Biden-Harris administration, including complaints about abuse.
During a July 16 hearing before the House Committee on Homeland Security, titled “An Inside Job: How NGOs Facilitated the Biden Border Crisis,” Ali Hopper, president and founder of GUARD Against Trafficking, testified to the Biden-Harris administration’s grievous neglect of calls concerned about child safety.
The hotline, which was operated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), was established to allow unaccompanied children, their sponsors, or any other person to report concerns about these minors’ safety or well-being.
A Trump administration investigation found that over the span of about a year-and-a-half, 65,000 calls to this hotline went unanswered, and included complaints spanning from minor issues like stale bread to reports of sexual abuse.
“One case where a child’s call was reporting that grown men were coming into his room at night, and they were touching him — nothing happened with that call,” said Hopper. “That call went unanswered — until this administration took office [and] went through those 65,000 calls, made follow-ups, conducted a welfare check, and now that child has been rescued and that sponsor has been arrested.”
“65,000 calls [to HHS] went unanswered…One case where a child’s call was reporting that grown men were coming into his room at night… That call went unanswered.”@ali_hopper details the Biden administration’s devastating failure to protect unaccompanied alien children: pic.twitter.com/G8GS8JdDYi
— House Homeland GOP (@HomelandGOP) July 16, 2025
This wasn’t the only way in which child safety was neglected by Biden-Harris government agencies. Hopper said that according to protocol, after a child was placed with a sponsor, two “welfare check” phone calls were to be made to the sponsor — but “if the sponsor didn’t answer, the case was no longer followed up on.”
Hopper also detailed how both government agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) into whose care the Biden-Harris administration placed unaccompanied migrant children failed in basic ways to protect these children.
She told how in one of the most tragic cases of mismanagement, an ORR field specialist visited a home to place a 17-year-old and “reported serious concerns, most notably that the adult claiming to be the child’s mother was adorned in MS-13 tattoos.”
“Despite these concerns, ORR leadership overruled that specialist. Tragically, three months later, that child was found dead, his pants around his ankles, with an older man passed out next to him,” recounted Hopper.
She noted that this case was “not isolated,” but reflected systemic dysfunction of the government agencies as well as NGOs.
Hopper listed examples of failures by the NGO Endeavors to protect children, quoting the first-hand accounts of compliance officers:
‘Staff were hired without completed fingerprinting or thorough background checks.’ ‘Male staff were found inside female dorms.’ ‘A contractor led 150 teenage girls, minors in sexually explicit dance routines…’ ‘Children collapsed after being subjected to massive vaccination protocols with no parental consent and no clear medical follow-up.’ ‘UACs on the verge of turning 18 were released early to avoid ICE transfer.’ ‘An Endeavors employee that raised concerns about too many children being sent to a single address was terminated.’
During the congressional hearing, Representative Clay Higgins (R-LA) ripped the Biden-Harris administration for facilitating the “abhorrent industry of child trafficking” through its open border policies, under which he said this trafficking “prospered.”
He pointed out that federal, state and local law enforcement agencies are currently working to locate and rescue trafficked children, “mostly girls,” who were trafficked into the U.S. from 2021 to 2024 under Biden’s presidential term.
“They’ve rescued so far, 35,000 [kids],” Higgins continued. He noted that “70 percent of the documentation turned in by so-called sponsors,” “lined up” by the NGOs through the HHS, was fraudulent or incomplete.
“It was a pipeline, man. We fed a pipeline of tender-aged children into sex trafficking and slave labor into our country. We’re finding these kids — we’re tracking these fraudulent documents.”
