Federal government did not properly track up to 320,000 unaccompanied minors: 'No assurance' they are 'safe from trafficking'

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A new disturbing report from the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General found that the federal government has not been properly tracking the whereabouts of approximately 320,000 unaccompanied migrant minors. As such, it cannot guarantee the children are not being subjected to trafficking and exploitation.

The August 19 report from Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, whom former President Donald Trump nominated, revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been unable to monitor the status of hundreds of thousands of children released from the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Health and Human Services custody.

'Without an ability to monitor the location and status of UCs, ICE has no assurance UCs are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.'

Unaccompanied minors who cross the southern border are apprehended by Customs and Border Protection and then transferred to HHS, which is responsible for finding and vetting sponsors for the children. In theory, these sponsors are supposed to be close relatives of the minors; however, under the Biden-Harris administration, the immigration system has become so overwhelmed that HHS employees are pressured to make placements quickly, and therefore, sponsors are not thoroughly vetted to ensure they are actually related to the child.

In 2021, federal employees blew the whistle on the department, claiming that it was putting children in "dangerous" situations, including likely placing minors with traffickers. One of those HHS whistleblowers, Tara Lee Rodas, previously testified that the agency "lost immediate contact with" 85,000 unaccompanied alien children.

A July report from the Wall Street Journal revealed that the Biden-Harris administration "repeatedly overrode the concerns of lower-level workers" and housed the children with guardians who had previously been rejected as sponsors.

The recent report from the inspector general found an "urgent issue," warning that "ICE cannot always monitor the location and status of unaccompanied migrant children who are released from DHS and HHS custody."

According to the report, of the 448,000 unaccompanied minors from fiscal years 2019 to 2023 transferred from ICE custody to HHS, 32,000 failed to appear for their immigration court hearings. Additionally, as of May, ICE did not serve Notice to Appear documents to more than 291,000 minors.

"Although we identified more than 32,000 UCs who did not appear for their immigration court dates, that number may have been much larger had ICE issued NTAs to the more than 291,000 UCs who were not placed into removal proceedings. By not issuing NTAs to all UCs, ICE limits its chances of having contact with UCs when they are released from HHS' custody, which reduces opportunities to verify their safety. Without an ability to monitor the location and status of UCs, ICE has no assurance UCs are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor," the report read.

ICE told ABC News that the interim report's findings may be "misleading and may be misconstrued because they fail to acknowledge key facts." According to the agency, it does not issue NTAs to unaccompanied children "until after they have been placed with sponsors who have been vetted by HHS."

Rob Law with the America First Policy Institute responded to the inspector general's report on social media, writing, "The day after the [Democratic National Committee] endorsed amnesty for human traffickers, the DHS Inspector General confirms that Biden-Harris handed over ~320k unaccompanied alien children back to the traffickers. This is FAR WORSE than the 85k lost UAC previously reported by NYT."

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Unaccompanied migrant child dies in US custody, a tragedy Biden called 'unacceptable' when Trump was president

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The Biden administration confirmed Friday that an unaccompanied migrant child who came to the United States from Honduras has died.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for caring for unaccompanied migrant children through the Office of Refugee Resettlement, provided no details about the child's death.

"[HHS] is deeply saddened by this tragic loss and our heart goes out to the family, with whom we are in touch," the agency said in a statement.

Honduran Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Reina confirmed the death, identifying the child as 17-year-old Ángel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinoza, who was placed in a migrant facility in Safety Harbor, Florida. He said that Honduran President Xiomara Castro de Zelaya has requested an "exhaustive" investigation into Espinoza's death to ensure there is full accountability for anyone responsible for the death.

According to CNN, Espinoza was taken to a local hospital on Wednesday after being found unconscious. Tragically, he was pronounced dead after resuscitation attempts failed to revive him.

A medical examiner is investigating the death.

There were about 8,700 unaccompanied migrant children in U.S. custody as of Wednesday. Most spend about one month in U.S. custody while they await being released to a sponsor, who is most often a family member already in the U.S.

Meanwhile, CNN reported this is not the first unaccompanied migrant child death under President Joe Biden. The outlet obtained a congressional note revealing that a 4-year-old migrant child from Honduras died in mid-March while in U.S. custody. That tragic death had not been previously reported.

Anything else?

In 2019, Joe Biden condemned tragic deaths of unaccompanied migrant children in U.S. custody as "unacceptable."

"Over the last year, six children have tragically died in US custody at the border. It’s unacceptable. It’s not who we are. And silence is complicity. It’s on all of us to stand up and speak out. America is a nation of immigrants. We must guarantee everyone's treated with dignity," Biden said at the time.

\u201cOver the last year, six children have tragically died in US custody at the border. It\u2019s unacceptable. It\u2019s not who we are. And silence is complicity. It\u2019s on all of us to stand up and speak out. America is a nation of immigrants. We must guarantee everyone's treated with dignity.\u201d
— Joe Biden (@Joe Biden) 1558616432

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Biden administration can't find at least one-third of illegal immigrant children released into US



The Biden administration continues to face massive criticism — from both Republicans and Democrats — for its botched handling of the illegal immigration crisis at the southern U.S. border, where hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens have flooded into the country since President Joe Biden's inauguration.

One of the many criticisms against the White House's approach to the issue has been its insistence on releasing illegal aliens in to the country after apprehension. Part of the administration's plan includes placing "unaccompanied minors" with sponsors in the U.S. These are children whom the government is supposed to keep tabs on — for their safety and for the sake of the immigration system.

But a new report from Axios this week revealed that the feds have failed miserably in keeping track of these minors: The government has lost contact with at least a third of them.

What's happening?

The numbers of illegal aliens slipping into the U.S. has spiked in recent months. In July alone, more than 212,000 migrants were detained along the Mexico border, the Washington Post reported last month. And that figure does not include the unknown number of illegals who successfully evaded authorities.

Of the migrants detained in July, about 19,000 were unaccompanied minors, the Post said. This is in addition to the 65,000 unaccompanied children detained the first five months of 2021.

With the surge in child migrants, the government has opted to place thousands of these kids with relatives or other pre-approved sponsors. The Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement has a published order of preference for sponsors:

ORR releases children to a sponsor in the following order of preference: parent; legal guardian; an adult relative (brother, sister, aunt, uncle, grandparent or first cousin); an adult individual or entity designated by the parent or legal guardian (through a signed declaration or other document that ORR determines is sufficient to establish the signatory's parental/guardian relationship); a licensed program willing to accept legal custody; or an adult individual or entity seeking custody when it appears that there is no other likely alternative to long term ORR care and custody.

The ORR requires that care providers who place children with sponsors are queried to "conduct a Safety and Well Being Follow Up Call with an unaccompanied alien child and his or her sponsor 30 days after the release date" in order to make sure the "child is still residing with the sponsor, is enrolled in or attending school, is aware of upcoming court dates, and is safe."

The providers are required to document the calls, including whether or not the provider is able to contact the sponsor or the child.

Axios filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the data after the government refused to share information about whether it had actually been making the required 30-day follow-up calls.

Turns out the situation is pretty grim.

According to the data culled by Axios, iin the first five months of 2021, care providers made 14,600 calls to check in with the minors released from HHS shelters to approved sponsors. In 4,890 of those cases — 33% — providers were not able to reach the child or the sponsor.

The share of unsuccessful calls grew from 26% in January to 37% in May, Axios said.

Not a great look for the Biden admin when it comes to caring for immigrant kids: https://t.co/EBKx4r7is3

— Chris Field (@ChrisMField) 1630687491.0

As the outlet noted, the summer migration surge "suggests the problem of losing track of released children could be compounded in the months to come."

Making matters even worse, the data Axios received indicated that the government has not been calling as frequently as it is required to.

"Between President Biden's inauguration and the end of May, HHS discharged 32,000 children and teens — but the government placed fewer than 15,000 follow-up calls, according to the FOIA response," Axios said, adding, "In both March and April, the number of kids discharged was twice as high as the number of check-in calls the following month — indicating that half of the released kids might not have gotten a 30-day call, according to public agency data."

Biden's HHS diverting millions of funds meant for COVID-19 vaccinations to program for unaccompanied migrant children crossing the border



The Department of Health and Human Services will reportedly take millions of dollars designated for COVID-19 vaccination efforts and divert the substantial funds to a program for sheltering unaccompanied migrant children who have entered the U.S. at the southern border.

The HHS will reallocate an additional $589 million to the agency's unaccompanied children program, some of those funds were dedicated to COVID-19 vaccinations, according to Fox News.

"HHS informed Congress that it is diverting $225 million in National Institute of Health (NIH) funding that was part of the December COVID-19 relief bill to the unaccompanied children (UAC) program, as well as $364 million in HHS funding that was passed as part of the American Rescue Plan (ARP)," a congressional source told the outlet.

The report noted that $187.5 million was set aside for the Centers for Disease Control for "vaccine planning, distribution, monitoring and tracking" and an additional $25 million for "vaccine confidence activities." There was also $151 million of the diverted funds that were to go to the "Supply Chain for Vaccines, Therapeutics and Medical Supplies."

The HHS claimed that the funds being diverted to the border crisis were not planned for any ongoing vaccine efforts, and had no impact on getting Americans vaccinated.

"The Unaccompanied Children program has long relied on funding transfers to meet its mission, and this year faces the additional expense of rebuilding a decimated system while taking pandemic-related safety precautions, such as testing and social distancing," an HHS spokesperson told Fox News.

The latest reallocation of funds means that the UAC has received over $4 billion in diverted money this year alone, according to the outlet.

A report from Politico surfaced in May that said the Biden administration pulled over $2 billion that was marked for COVID-19 health resources, and sent the money to Biden's border crisis.

"The redirected funds include $850 million that Congress originally allocated to rebuild the nation's Strategic National Stockpile, the emergency medical reserve strained by the Covid-19 response," Politico reported at the time. "Another $850 million is being taken from a pot intended to help expand coronavirus testing, according to three people with knowledge of the matter."

The HHS reportedly took approximately $436 million from a "range of existing health initiatives across the department."

Politico reported that the $2.13 billion in diverted COVID-19 funds "exceeds the government's annual budget for the unaccompanied children program in each of the last two fiscal years."

The HHS's fiscal year 2022 budget for "Refugees and Unaccompanied Migrant Children" has a total budget of $4.4 billion. In the HHS budget, they are requesting "$3.3 billion for the unaccompanied children program, an increase of $2.0 billion above the FY 2021 appropriation."

"This investment rebuilds the nation's refugee infrastructure to support resettling up to 125,000 refugees in 2022, the highest number of refugees admitted to the United States in 30 years," the HHS stated.

"Funds will support the cost of caring for children referred to ACF as well as reforms to the program to better position ACF to address future surges and implement child welfare best practices," the HHS said.

The unaccompanied children program's mission: "Making and implementing the best shelter placement decisions for the unaccompanied children, providing home assessments for certain categories of children, and ensuring, to the greatest extent practicable, that all UC in custody have access to pro bono legal representation or counsel for immigration proceedings."

There were more than 19,000 unaccompanied minors detained at the U.S. southern border in July, outpacing the previous high of 18,877 in March, according to the Associated Press. The number of families arriving in the U.S. reached the second-highest total on record in July, and there were a total of 212,672 people apprehended at the southern border.