Report: Biden admin released migrant children to unvetted sponsors, facilitating abuse, exploitation

During President Donald Trump’s first term, stringent screening guidelines were implemented to ensure the full vetting of typically related sponsors entrusted with the care of unaccompanied migrant children apprehended at the border following their release from federal custody, only to see those guidelines dismantled and ignored by the Biden administration.

Now, a new report from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has revealed that the Biden administration frequently released unaccompanied migrant children to unrelated and unvetted sponsors, some of whom were criminals and did terrible things to the vulnerable migrant kids, as the Western Journal reported.

That horrible policy under Biden allowed countless migrant children to be exploited by their sponsors in various tragic situations like forced labor, neglect of basic necessities, sexual abuse, and trafficking, among other crimes.

Migrant children exploited

An ICE press release in June announced what was found after a nationwide migrant child welfare initiative was launched in February to check on the locations and status of unaccompanied migrant children who were released to sponsor custody over the past four years.

Investigative agents uncovered numerous “alarming instances of abuse and exploitation,” such as minor children who’d been sexually abused, forced into labor, or had their basic needs neglected, as well as sponsors who possessed child pornography or had engaged in serious criminal activities that included “offenses of hit-and-run, aggravated assault, larceny, counterfeiting, drug trafficking, prostitution, and even attempted murder.”

There were even a few horrifying instances of underage migrant girls who were impregnated by sponsors who fraudulently claimed to be related to the child.

Biden administration failed to protect

“Children’s safety and security is nonnegotiable,” ICE spokesman Laszlo Baksay said at the time of the report. “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.”

“Our agents are doing what should’ve been done all along: protecting children, not pushing them into the shadows,” he continued. “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.”

Baksay added, “Media outlets should focus less on political spin and more on the facts. This is about the lives of children, and it’s time we treat it with the seriousness its demands.”

Suspicions confirmed

Fox News reported on the “disturbing” discoveries made by ICE agents about the status of some previously released unaccompanied migrant children during the welfare checks and shared the horrified reaction of former U.S. Border Patrol Yuma sector chief Chris Clem, who served as an adviser to the second Trump administration during its first 100 days.

“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 about ICE’s child welfare initiative, and noted, “There should be zero controversy regarding protecting the children. Regardless of the ideologues that are out there, accounting for these children is critical.”

The former agent and chief acknowledged that he and others in Border Patrol and ICE suspected that certain serious issues involving the release of unaccompanied migrant children “were not being addressed” under the Biden administration, but none were aware of the full extent of the problems.

“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],” Clem said. “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.”

The general “expectation of the American public that our government is serving the kids in the best interest was absolutely necessary,” he added. “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.”

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