(The Center Square) – Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche dropped a bombshell of data on Thursday describing Trump administration efforts to find hundreds of thousands of missing unaccompanied alien children (UACs). UACs are minors trafficked to the U.S. border and smuggled into the U.S. under the guise of reuniting with family. In reality, many have been trafficked through a complex network run by transnational criminal organizations.
More than 475,000 UACs were trafficked to the U.S. during the Biden administration. More than 300,000 were unaccounted as of the end of 2024, Blanche said at a press conference in Washington, D.C.
“The way that this happened is criminals trafficked these children to the border usually committing fraud to do so,” he said. “Oftentimes the children were abused, assaulted and certainly exploited.”
Once UACs arrive in the U.S., federal law requires that their oversight and care be administered by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families. The ORR has historically sent the majority of children to live with so-called sponsors.
Under the Biden administration, ORR often placed UACs with unvetted sponsors, background checks weren’t performed, UACs were released to alleged gang members, human traffickers, non-family members and sent to non-residential addresses, federal inspector general audits and a Florida grandjury found, The Center Square reported.
“In some cases, individuals would sponsor multiple children, which required them to lie to government personnel and on government forms claiming they were close relatives when in fact they were not,” Blanche said. “They would use fake or stolen identities and make other false claims during the application process in order to obtain custody of the children.”
The crimes committed against hundreds of thousands of children are a direct result of the federal government failing “to protect our borders,” Blanche said. As a result, “it is the most vulnerable who suffer.”
Last fall, the Trump administration launched a welfare check initiative with multiple federal agencies attempting to locate the UACs, The Center Square reported. The Trump administration is also still releasing UACs to sponsors.
U.S. attorneys nationwide are prosecuting human traffickers and smugglers, including of UACs, as well as those who put UACs into forced labor and sex trafficking schemes.
There are more than 15,500 super-sponsor cases the DOJ has identified along with the Department of Homeland Security, Blanche said. Super-sponsor cases involve individuals who sponsor more than three unrelated UACs. The cases involve sexual assault of children, “the stuff of nightmares,” he said.
Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin said, “When we started digging into these cases, we started hearing the absolute horrific things that took place under the Biden administration. It was true neglect, at best, and criminal, at worst, to allow 450,000 kids to go missing throughout this country.”
Thanks to Congress fulling funding federal immigration enforcement over the next three years, he said, “We're able to push and go find these kids.”
So far, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, DHS, the DOJ and other agencies have found 146,000 UACs, Mullin said. “We still have nearly 300,000 missing.”
“We're investigating reports” in response to children claiming “they've been raped 600 to 700 times,” he said.
“I don't care who you are. I don't care if you have kids, you don't have kids. I don't care if you're a liberal, you're an Independent, you're a Democrat, you're a Republican. If you can't stand for law enforcement to go find these kids, who are you?”
Mullin also said federal agents have found the majority of UACs in so-called sanctuary cities run by Democrats. He criticized New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who’s opposed ICE operations. “He knows what's happening in the streets. He knows who he's harboring, and at this point, abetting, by saying that we can't go operate,” Mullin said.
“We're going to go find the worst of the worst” in New York City, he said. “We're going to rescue as many kids as we possibly can. We're going to enforce our nation's laws and we're going to right the wrongs that the Biden administration turned a blind eye to.”
“Four years of a blind eye allowed unvetted sponsors to come pick up 450,000 kids on our borders knowing … it was reported that over a third of the females regardless of age were sexually assaulted before they made it to the border,” he said. The Biden administration “knew it was human traffickers who were trafficking these young kids to the border. Then they didn’t vet the so-called sponsors. There were zero wellness checks.”
ICE officers are finding the children, “the same individuals that the Democrats want to demonize. Every single day it is our law enforcement out there doing that job,” Mullin said.
To missing children, he said, “we're going to find you.”
To their abusers, he said, “we're going to bring you to justice.”
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