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The Department of Homeland Security is pulling back the curtain on widespread abuse and exploitation of unaccompanied minors who crossed the U.S. border during the last administration and were placed with unvetted sponsors.
DHS launched a national child welfare initiative in February to identify and locate at-risk kids who may have been placed with improperly vetted or unvetted sponsors — some of whom had been paid off by smugglers — when they came to the United States.
“Children’s safety and security is non-negotiable,” ICE spokesperson Laszlo Baksay said in a statement. “The previous administration’s failure to implement meaningful safeguards has allowed vulnerable kids to fall into the hands of criminals. Our special agents are working tirelessly to locate these alien children, ensure their protection, and hold accountable those who have abused the system.”
DHS added that since the agency launched its child welfare initiative, officials have discovered sponsors in possession of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), sponsors who forced minors into labor, and sponsors who subjected children to neglectful living conditions.
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A group of 116 illegal immigrants, including 11 unaccompanied children, were apprehended in Eagle Pass, Texas. (Texas DPS)
In addition, officials also traced the records of sponsors previously convicted of serious crimes ranging from hit-and-runs and attempted murder to prostitution and drug trafficking.
In some of “the most disturbing cases,” sponsors falsely claiming to be the family members of unaccompanied minor girls impregnated those girls when they were placed in their sponsors’ care, according to DHS and Chris Clem, former U.S. Border Patrol chief at the Yuma, Arizona, sector. Clem helped advise the Trump administration’s Health and Human Services Department on solutions for unaccompanied minors during the president’s first 100 days in office.
“Regardless of the ideologues that are out there, accounting for these children is critical.”
“While that had begun on Inauguration Day, because of the backlog of cases, the information … was poor at best in so many of these instances,” Clem said of the child welfare initiative. “It was taking more time. And so we put a lot of things in place that … everything is lining up. … There should be zero controversy regarding protecting the children. Regardless of the ideologues that are out there, accounting for these children is critical.”
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Migrants are processed at the intake area of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility, the main detention center for unaccompanied children in the Rio Grande Valley, in Donna, Texas, Tuesday, Mar. 30, 2021. (AP)
Clem added that as a former Border Patrol agent and chief, he knew there were issues “that were not being addressed” regarding unaccompanied minors during the last administration, when millions of illegal immigrants entered the country from the southern border.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which argues for lower levels of immigration overall, estimates that as of March 2025, there were approximately 18.6 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S., representing a population that has grown by approximately 28.2% or 4.1 million since December 2020.
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U.S. Border Patrol vehicles take away groups of vulnerable immigrants, including unaccompanied minors who had crossed over from Mexico, in May 2023 in El Paso, Texas. (John Moore/Getty Images)
This week, new Border Patrol data revealed that zero migrants were released into the United States in May, signaling an overwhelming turnaround since 62,000 were released into the country under the Biden administration at the same time last year.
“We knew from a law enforcement perspective, our job was to do the immediate safety check, and then we had to process the kids and place them in custody of Office of Refugee [Resettlement]. Now, what happened from there, we didn’t have specifics, but we knew … it was government. … We knew there [were] probably problems — the vetting and being able to ask questions to the kids was never something we were really allowed to do.”
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Arizona border patrol agents apprehended 81 migrant children in August 2022 – 71 were unaccompanied. (@USBPChiefTCA via Twitter)
Clem said the “expectation of the American public that our government is serving the kids in the best interest was absolutely necessary.”
“So that’s why it’s important to me, because it’s protecting children, and it’s doing what the majority of Americans expect us to do as a government — and that’s, at the very least, take care of these children,” the former Border Patrol chief said.
DHS PUSHES BACK AGAINST CLAIMS OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AT ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
A U.S. Border Patrol agent checks for identification of immigrants as they wait to be processed by the U.S. Border Patrol after crossing the border from Mexico on Dec. 30, 2022 in Yuma, Arizona. (Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images)
ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agents have been conducting welfare checks on migrant children who crossed the border unaccompanied. The welfare checks are designed to assess the children’s situations and ensure they are receiving appropriate care and not being abused or trafficked, according to DHS.
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A group of 116 illegal immigrants, including 11 unaccompanied children, were apprehended in Eagle Pass, Texas on Wednesday morning. (Texas DPS)
“Our agents are doing what should’ve been done all along: protecting children, not pushing them into the shadows,” Baksay said. “This is the responsibility of any government, Republican or Democrat, but it was the Trump administration that insisted on rigorous sponsor screening and biometric verification. Those guardrails were dismantled, and we’re now seeing the consequences.”
If an ICE HSI officer encounters adults living in the United States illegally, they will take those people into custody and process them for removal, while unaccompanied children living in the United States illegally are transferred to Office of Refugee Resettlement custody, DHS said.
Fox News Digital’s Taylor Penley contributed to this report.