Josh Hawley demands answers from Biden-Harris administration over missing, abused immigrant children

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) blasted Biden-Harris Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Thursday after a report revealed that hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant children have gone missing into the interior of the US, where many are likely to be subject to forced labor, sex trafficking, and other abuses.

Unaccompanied children are admitted to the US when they show up at the border. They are often handed off to sponsor, and those sponsors are not vetted by the government. This has led to children being unaccounted for and many suffering abuse at the hands of those sponsors, though the numbers on that are not known.

In a letter sent to Mayorkas, he stated, "Unaccompanied migrant children are some of the most vulnerable individuals in America. They are routinely trafficked for sex, forced into illegal labor, burned with chemicals, and subjected to countless other atrocities by cartels."

"A recent report published by DHS’s Inspector General—that is to say, an internal review of your own agency—has revealed catastrophic failures in your agency’s ability to protect unaccompanied migrant children, right up to the present day. This is despite your testimony in an October 2023 Senate committee hearing in response to my question on this exact topic. At the time you said, 'we actually have prioritized the rescue of children who have been human trafficked.'"

It was reported by the DHS Inspector General that about 448,820 illegal immigrant children have been brought to the US between Fiscal years 2019 and 2023, and then sent to live with "sponsors." But because of a policy that hands off unaccompanied children who cross the border from ICE to the Department of Health and Human Services and then to "sponsors" in the US, many of these children have not been tracked. In 2019 and 2020, that number was less than 50,000. It has skyrocketed under Biden-Harris.

Illegal immigrant children are usually kept track of by ICE through giving them a "notice to appear" for immigration court after they have been sent to their sponsor, but two thirds of the time, or about 291,000 out of the near 450,000, the children were not given notices to appear in immigration court. Another 32,000 who were given court dates did not appear and were not tracked down.

Hawley commented on this in the letter, "Your agency may have lost track of more than a quarter million unaccompanied children—a horrifyingly large number," however, even some who were given noticed to appear were also lost. Hawley wrote, "According to the report, your agency 'was not able to account' for the location of unaccompanied children who did receive court notices and failed to appear in immigration court. That was at least 32,000 children."

Hawley demanded that Mayorkas provide immediate public answers on where the illegal immigrant children are and what policies will be used to locate them. Other reporting has indicated that many illegal immigrant children have been trafficked and sent to the addresses of suspected criminals.

The report and Hawley's comments highlight the continued border crisis under the policies from the Biden-Harris administration. Voters in the US have favored Trump on the topic in recent polling, saying that he would handle immigration better than Harris would.