Trump admin finds 22,638 unaccompanied migrant children lost by Biden—27 are dead

The Trump administration has been able to recover 22,638 unaccompanied children. However, as police have conducted operations to find the children, 27 of the minors have been found dead by murder, suicide, or drug overdose. Over 400 of the so-called "sponsors" have also been arrested as officers have conducted the search for the unaccompanied migrant children.

"It's important that we find these cases where children are being used for labor and sexually trafficked," John Fabbricatore, an HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) senior advisor, told Fox News. In March, a team was assembled to locate the tens of thousands of children that were allowed into the US under the Biden administration and then released to sponsors, many of them being unvetted and not related to the children.

Border Czar Tom Homan had been tasked with finding those thousands of children who were unaccounted for after they were released by the Biden administration to sponsors without notices to appear for a court date, and 32,000 failed to appear for immigration court dates. This allowed for exploitation of children in many cases, Fabbricatore said.

"We found children who have been raped," he said. "We're talking about debt bondage, where children are being made to work off debt, trafficking debt. We're talking about children that were brought into situations and then treated like sexual slaves. You know, where children are in horrific environments, just environments that they should not be in, where the sponsor is a heroin dealer and that child winds up dying of a heroin overdose."

After Biden took office, a surge of unaccompanied minors started to show up at the border, with over 470,000 by December 2024. HHS has said that many of those children were then handed off to sponsors under lax vetting standards, leading to the exploitation of many of the migrant children.

"There wasn't very good recordkeeping" under the Biden administration, Fabbricatore said. "It's drawing that data back in, being able to identify addresses, where these children went, who these sponsors actually were. In many cases, that data is, is horrible. What the Biden administration was taking in and putting into our computer systems was not the right information. So now we have to draw that all back in and deeply investigate into where some of these children went."

One of the most concerning things, Fabbricatore added, was that the Biden administration failed to conduct DNA tests in order to screen sponsors claiming to be family members of children crossing the border. The Trump administration has made improvements in keeping up-to-date records as well as improving the system, Fabbricatore added.

"So now, under this administration, we are making sure that we know there's a real familial connection through DNA, and we are not releasing these children unless we have the right information," Fabbricatore added. "Children are staying in custody longer, but there's a reason for that, because we want to ensure that these children remain safe.

When Trump entered the White House, there was a backlog of over 65,000 unaddressed Notifications of Concern, or reports made after the minors were released to the sponsors, according to ORR. The allegations in the reports ranged from trafficking to exploitation.

The goal is to locate the children and relocate them to their families. If their parents are in a previous country and there is not a credible fear claim, is it not better for a child to be with their parents or in our foster care system here in the United States?" Fabbricatore said. "I would argue that we shouldn't be putting them in care here in the US when they have families in their country of origin. And if we can prove that they're safer in the country, that they're going back to, that is where they should be with their parents."