The Trump administration has set yet another record, this time in locating and recovering more than 22,000 unaccompanied minors who entered the United States illegally, arresting more than 400 sponsors accused of child abuse and other related crimes.
Fox News obtained an exclusive interview with the team tasked with recovering these children and ensuring those who facilitated the trafficking of unaccompanied minors are brought to justice. Twenty-seven of the minors recovered had died due to murder, suicide, or drug overdose, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
The team was formed in March, as President Trump tasked Border Czar Tom Homan with locating unaccompanied children who had crossed the southern border. Many of them were released to unscreened sponsors or unrelated adults, leaving them exposed to exploitation, trafficking, and abusive working conditions. The team operates under the HHS and is composed of volunteers from a multitude of federal agencies, including members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Homeland Security Investigations.
They work out of what they call the "war room" in Washington, D.C., officially known as the ORR Interagency Crime Coordination Cell.
John Fabbricatore, a senior advisor HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), said, "It's important that we find these cases where children are being used for labor and sexually trafficked."
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He noted that they "found children who have been raped."
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.
In 2021, children began crossing the Southern border at a rate faster than the HHS could process. During the course of Biden's Presidency, the ORR received more than 470,000 referrals of unaccompanied minors who had crossed into the United States. Those children were then released to various sponsors under lax screening laws, leaving those children in dangerous conditions. The team is using all available data to track down those children.
Under the Biden administration, "There wasn't very good recordkeeping," 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."
He said the most concerning screening failure was the inability to determine if the children were being released to legitimate family members via DNA tests. The current Trump administration is moving to fix the process.
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. Children are staying in custody longer, but there's a reason for that, because we want to ensure that these children remain safe.
The "war room" may have rescued tens of thousands, but the search has only just begun.
Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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