For all the talk about illegal immigration during the recent presidential campaign, one aspect that got little attention was the plight of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children said to have disappeared since crossing the border.

Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, did raise the issue during October’s vice-presidential debate when he claimed the Department of Homeland Security had effectively lost 320,000 migrant children. 

“Some of them have been sex trafficked,” he said, “some of them hopefully are at homes with their families; some of them have been used as drug trafficking mules.” 

But many media organizations responded swiftly with “fact-checks” that minimized the severity of the situation and suggested Vance’s comment had lacked context. 

In one report from The Associated Press, for example, Jonathan Beier, associate director of research and evaluation for the Acacia Center for Justice’s Unaccompanied Children Program, said, “This is not a ‘missing kids’ problem; it’s a ‘missing paperwork’ problem.”

Those seeking to raise awareness about such children beg to differ. 

“This is absolutely not a missing-paperwork problem,” Jason Piccolo, a former agent with the U.S. Border Patrol, told the Register. Piccolo, who has written and spoken about what happens to unaccompanied migrant children after they cross the nation’s southwest border, added, “There are simply not enough resources, whether contractors or federal employees to track the hundreds of thousands of children that have entered and remain in the United States.” Unfortunately, he said, that means thousands could have ended up in the hands of sex or labor traffickers. 

Aug. 19 Report

Indeed, an Aug. 19 report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Inspector General said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cannot monitor the location and status of all the unaccompanied migrant children released from Homeland Security and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) custody. 

According to the report, from 2019 to 2023, ICE transferred more than 448,000 unaccompanied children to HHS. Of those, more than 32,000 received a notice to appear in immigration court, but did not show up. More than 291,000 did not get such notices. 

Although personnel at the Department of Migration and Refugee Services (MRS) at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and others do not take the view that lack of monitoring or failure to issue a notice to appear means all such children are missing or in danger, the report does state that, in both instances, ICE had no way of making sure these children were safe from trafficking, exploitation or forced labor.

The Aug. 19 report also notes that certain federal agencies, including DHS, HHS and the Department of Justice, have been charged by Congress with ensuring that these children are protected from criminal, harmful or exploitative activity. 

As Piccolo said, “When these children arrive, they’re supposed to be placed in safe, vetted homes or facilities, but the system is broken.”

Elizabeth Yore, an international child advocate attorney and founder of Yore Children, which advocates for the protection of children and fights to end child exploitation in trafficking, pornography and abuse, agreed. She said to expedite placement of unaccompanied migrant children — defined as those who are under age 18, lacking lawful immigration status, and without a parent or legal guardian in the U.S. — background checks on sponsors have been relaxed and reduced and home studies not required. 

Once placed, the children are not being tracked or monitored to determine their location and whether they are attending school or receiving medical care. “Literally, it’s dump and run — and I’m not being flippant,” Yore said. “All the requirements built into the regulations are being ignored.” 

Congressional Hearings

Recent congressional hearings have further revealed the depth of the problem. 

At a Nov. 19 hearing before members of the House Homeland Security Committee, Alicia Hopper, a human-trafficking expert, said, “The very system meant to protect vulnerable children has become a trafficking pipeline.” 

She added that Biden-Harris administration policies prioritizing speed over safety have placed children with unvetted sponsors, increasing their risk. In addition, she said, “This administration’s decision to eliminate DNA testing to verify familial relationships has created dangerous loopholes, which traffickers are now currently aware of and actively exploiting.” 

Hopper went on to tell of a young girl who arrived at the border with people claiming to be her relatives. She was bruised and disoriented and later was found to have been raped. 

“Yet she was sent back to her abusers because no verification was done to confirm her guardianship. “This is not an isolated case,” she said, “but a glaring failure of the system, leaving children in the hands of those who exploit them.”

At the same hearing, HHS whistleblower Tara Rodas said, “HHS has a 10-year demonstrated record of losing children to sponsors who traffic, exploit and harm children in unthinkable ways.” Rodas, who previously worked for the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) placing unaccompanied migrant children with sponsors in California, also testified that when she attempted to raise concerns about addresses where children were being sent, she was told her job was not to investigate the sponsors but to get the children to the sponsors. 

Becerra Defends His Track Record

The handling of unaccompanied migrant children also came under scrutiny Nov. 20 when HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra was questioned at a hearing by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement. 

Becerra defended his agency’s track record with migrant children, saying it follows “child-welfare best practices” and employs extensive background checks that would keep a child from being placed with a sponsor involved in criminal activity. 

But U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., suggested Becerra’s agency was not conducting proper vetting of sponsors.

“That’s how you end up with an MS-13 gang member as the sponsor,” Biggs said. “That’s how you end up with pedophiles getting 20 children in the same home. ... The vetting has been crappy. That’s the bottom line.”

Becerra denied knowing about such occurrences.

During questioning from Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wis., Becerra also said he was unaware of unaccompanied migrant children being placed with sponsors whose address was a strip club in Florida. That information was in a 2023 Florida grand jury report on unaccompanied migrant children. 

According to Piccolo, migrant children who fall into the “unaccompanied” category are typically brought to the U.S. by smugglers or nonfamilial adults. 

“Many children are handed over to smugglers by desperate families who believe they’re giving their children a chance at a better life,” he said. “Others are brought by adults claiming to be relatives but who have no actual family connection. This is precisely why proper vetting protocols — including DNA testing and background checks — are so crucial. Without these safeguards, we have no way to verify who these adults really are or what their true intentions might be with these vulnerable children.”

Enhanced Background Checks

Piccolo said Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley’s office has been instrumental in pushing for enhanced background checks, mandatory fingerprinting, and other such measures for sponsor placements. When Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, Piccolo said his administration took immediate action to ensure comprehensive vetting protocols, from rapid DNA testing to fingerprinting, were in place. 

“This wasn’t about creating new policies,” Piccolo said. “It was about enforcing existing ones that had been previously ignored. They put teeth into the requirements for background checks, fingerprinting and proper documentation to verify relationships between children and potential sponsors. These enhanced vetting procedures were crucial steps toward protecting unaccompanied minors from trafficking and exploitation.”

With the election of Joe Biden to the presidency in 2020, however, many of those protections were dismantled, supposedly, Piccolo said, to expedite the processing of children. 

“From what I understand, [the agency] was allegedly overwhelmed and couldn’t release the children in a manageable time,” he said. 

He said he is hopeful that with Trump’s return to office all available resources will be directed to save these children. 

According to a statement released by Grassley’s office to the Register, the senator is committed to working through Congress and with the incoming Trump administration to reforming the unaccompanied children program. 

Laying the blame for hundreds of thousands of children being lost or abused at the feet of the Biden-Harris administration, he said, “I’m particularly focused on finding as many lost children as possible, holding criminal sponsors accountable, and enhancing law enforcement’s window into the program so as to prevent future abuse.”

US Bishops’ Recommendations

In November 2023, the chairman of the USCCB Committee on Migration sent a letter to Congress offering recommendations from the bishops’ Migrant and Refugee Services Department to help protect unaccompanied migrant children. These included clarifying the authority of HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement to intervene in cases where a child has already been released to a sponsor and the child’s safety or well-being is at risk. 

“It’s something that could have been remedied in part by placing every single unaccompanied migrant child on what ICE calls an ‘Order of Supervision,’” he said. 

This would mean the child, accompanied by his or her sponsor, would report to an ICE office on a designated date to check on case status and determine any changes in living circumstances. Said Piccolo, “This would give the ICE officer an opportunity to talk with the sponsor and conduct up-to-date criminal history checks of the sponsor.” 

Piccolo is troubled by reports showing that, since 2012, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has encountered more than 850,000 unaccompanied migrant children, most of whom cannot be accounted for. 

“Believe me, it can keep you up at night. When you look at these numbers and realize we can’t definitively say where many of them are today, it’s devastating,” he said. “These aren’t just statistics, they’re children. Each one of them deserves to be safe, protected and accounted for. The fact that we can’t provide those basic assurances is a moral failure that haunts me.”