DHS Announces Trump Administration Has Located 146,000 Migrant Children Lost Under Biden
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced Thursday that the Trump administration has located 146,000 unaccompanied migrant children who were trafficked into the United States during the Biden administration and subsequently lost.
During a news conference at the Department of Justice with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and other Trump administration officials, Mullin credited a joint effort between DHS, ICE and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for finding the missing children, which he said President Trump has made a high priority.
Unfortunately, nearly 300,000 minors remain unaccounted for, according to Mullin, although officials continue to search for them.
The DHS secretary lamented that Democrats and their allies in the media continue to demonize DHS and ICE as they work to find them, telling reporters that investigators are examining horrific abuse allegations, including claims from some children that they were “raped 600 to 700 times.”
“I don’t care who you are,” he said. “If you can’t stand for law enforcement to go find these kids, who are you?”
Mullin attributed the child trafficking crisis to the Biden administration’s failure to vet sponsors and conduct wellness checks, saying it was “true neglect at best and criminal at worst to allow 450,000 kids to go missing throughout this country.”
He also stated that most of the trafficked minors were being found in “sanctuary” cities, calling out New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani specifically for not allowing federal immigration agents into the city to conduct immigration enforcement operations.
Officials described a lax system under the Biden administration where “super sponsors” used fraud to gain custody of multiple children, often lying about familial relationships.
Blanche noted that many of these children were abused, assaulted, and exploited by criminal networks linked to drug cartels while being trafficked into the country.
Blanche said the Department of Justice is currently tracking 15,500 super-sponsor cases connected to hundreds of thousands of migrant children smuggled into the country between 2021 and 2024.
“I think I’m stating the obvious, but when the government fails to protect our borders, it is the most vulnerable who suffer,” he said.
Blanche also announced the indictments of three Guatemalan nationals living in Ohio, who allegedly worked as super sponsors and are connected to more than a dozen cases of smuggling migrant minors into the U.S.
Pressed for evidence that Biden officials knowingly allowed migrant minors to be placed into the custody of unvetted sponsors, Blanche said “it can’t be disputed” that top administration officials knew it was happening.
“There were individuals occupying positions of leadership in this country that knew this was happening and either didn’t care, encouraged it or a little bit of both,” Blanche said, adding there was an “incredible dereliction of duties at best.”
“Everybody in this room knows this was happening—it was being reported at the time it was happening and there was no outrage and no one tried to hold these people accountable and kids now are paying for it,” Mullin told reporters. “They’re getting raped over and over and over again because this previous administration chose not to enforce our nation’s laws and protect the most vulnerable.”
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