According to Border Czar Tom Homan, the Trump administration has already located some 25,000 migrant children who were “lost” during the Biden years after crossing the southern border alone.
Many of these children, Homan revealed on Fox News Thursday, were not simply “missing in paperwork.” They were trapped in the darkest corners of exploitation — forced labor, sex trafficking, abuse. At least 27 have already been confirmed dead.
The scale of the problem is almost incomprehensible. During former President Biden’s tenure, an inspector general’s report found that more than 320,000 migrant children were unaccounted for after being released into the U.S. to poorly vetted sponsors.
The failures weren’t minor bureaucratic oversights — they were systemic. Children were handed over to people with fake documents, individuals who were not their relatives, and in many cases, traffickers.
And the government knew it.
Whistleblowers inside the Department of Health and Human Services have described a vetting process so flimsy it amounted to a 30-day courtesy call — one that almost always went unanswered. Red flags were ignored. Staff were reprimanded for questioning documents or contacting consulates. One whistleblower testified that her superiors told her point-blank: “Your job is not to investigate the sponsor. Your job is to reunify the child with the sponsor.” Once a child was handed over, she was told, “they’re gone and they are no longer your responsibility.”
That indifference left tens of thousands of children to vanish into the shadows of America’s underground economy. Many were enslaved in brutal labor, “working ungodly hours, not going to school, not being paid,” as Homan described. Others fell victim to sex traffickers. Behind each number is a name, a face, and a life forever scarred.
Trump’s team is now working to track these children down. “We’ve rescued thousands of children,” Homan said. “And President Trump is committed, I’m committed that we’re not gonna stop looking for these children ’til we find every single one of them or run down the leads on them.”
It is a damning indictment of the Biden administration that such a commitment is even necessary. More than 291,000 migrant children as of May 2024 never received future court dates. Another 32,000 were released with hearings but never showed up. Federal authorities have no idea where they are.
The picture that emerges is one of willful negligence. Billions of taxpayer dollars flowed to contractors who failed to vet sponsors, while government officials turned a blind eye. “Children were being trafficked with billions of taxpayer dollars,” whistleblower Deborah White testified. “With government officials complicit in it.”
