“Thousands” of migrant children who disappeared after being smuggled across the US-Mexico border under the Biden administration have been rescued from grim fates such as being sex-trafficked to pedophiles, according to border czar Tom Homan — who revealed that a 14-year-old pregnant girl was found living with adult men just two weeks ago.
In the latest episode of Miranda Devine’s “Pod Force One” podcast, Homan said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have also located minors who were forced into servitude on ranches and chicken farms, as the agency searches for hundreds of thousands of migrant children unaccounted for during President Joe Biden’s four-year illegal alien invasion.
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“There were 300,000 missing children under the last administration,” said Homan. “We’ve found thousands of them … We rescued victims of sex trafficking [and] two weeks ago, we rescued a 14-year-old that was already pregnant, living with adult men …
“We rescued some victims of forced labor. We found children working on ranches and chicken farms, not going to school, but enslaved labor in the United States of America …
“Some of the children we found [were] perfectly fine with their families … They just didn’t respond to call-ins [because they] didn’t want to face the consequences of immigration court.”
The number of unaccompanied alien children [UACs] entering the US surged to record levels under Biden, as changes to border enforcement policies incentivized families and smugglers to send minors to America.
More than 500,000 children were recorded entering the country and were placed with sponsors while awaiting immigration proceedings.
A report last August from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General found that the Biden administration lost track of hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied children and placed some with potentially dangerous sponsors who had not been adequately vetted.
Full episode
More than 31,000 addresses provided by sponsors turned out to be “blank, undeliverable, or missing apartment numbers,” the inspector general reported. At one location, “sponsor addresses were incorrect 80 percent of the time.”
ICE officers at one field office also told the inspector general that thousands of migrant children had been released to sponsors “who are not immediate family and are not a parent, sibling, or grandparent.”
HHS released more than 14,500 migrant children in 2023 and more than 9,600 in 2024 “to unrelated sponsors” or distant relatives.
Of the more than 2,400 children released to sponsors over one week in November 2023, only 1,000 went to their parent or a legal guardian.
About 300 went to unrelated sponsors or distant family members. Three children were released to their “spouses,” including one who was 40 years old.
“Although these relatives may have been appropriately qualified, [one ICE officer] noted the UACs most at risk for trafficking or forced labor are those released to an unrelated sponsor.”
During visits to three sponsor addresses to which multiple children had been released, the inspector general found “potentially unsafe conditions” including “bars on the inside of a window” in an area that was “very dangerous, was run by gangs, and had high crime rates and daily shootings. The [ICE officer] noted one UAC within their area of responsibility left their sponsor’s address to join a local gang.”
Another sponsor address was found to be “a rundown apartment complex with appliances stacked on patios and apartments with no doors. Police also reported criminal activities at this location, such as a stabbing and shootings.
“Another sponsor address was a dilapidated motel that did not have a kitchen. UACs’ sponsors provided this address five times.
“During a site visit in another city, ICE officers noted an illegal drug deal occurring based on their law enforcement experience at an apartment complex where 44 UACs had been released in FY 2023.”
Homan told “Pod Force One” that the Biden administration rushed the vetting process to avoid the “optics” of overcrowding at the border.
“They didn’t care about the invasion itself; it was the optics.”
DNA tests were routinely used during the first Trump administration to verify that an adult accompanying a child really was the parent, he said, but the Biden administration abandoned that policy.
Homan said in some of the DNA testing “as high as 30 percent [of] the families weren’t families. Not relatives at all. The [children] were being trafficked…
“A lot of parents paid a smuggling organization to bring their kids [over the border]. Some of these children were trafficked. We know HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] had several investigations where a child was rented by the criminal cartel to an adult male or female, crossed the border [and] when you’re done, you send the kid back [and] re-rent them.”
Homan had harsh words for Democrat politicians like Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) who he said are “screaming and yelling about ICE arresting people and ICE enforcing the law. Meanwhile, in four years under Biden … sex trafficking of women and children skyrocketed, not a word.”
“Thousands of children were being smuggled into the country every week. Over half a million children were smuggled into the United States. Separated from their families, put into the hands of criminal cartels… not a word.”
“We’re going to find every one of these kids,” Homan vowed. “President Trump made a promise. We’re going to keep that promise.”
