Getty ImagesDonald Trump’s incoming border czar, Tom Homan, has said the US government “can’t find” more than 300,000 migrant children – and that many are trapped in forced labor and sex trafficking.
President-elect Donald Trump and his political allies, including Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, have repeatedly made similar claims.
Some experts have accused them of distorting statistics to suggest that children are “missing” and victims of crime, although there is agreement that aspects of the system need to change.
The incoming administration has made immigration enforcement a priority, promising to block the US-Mexico border and mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
Let’s take a look at the claims of missing migrant children.
What are the Trump team’s claims?
In an interview with Fox News on Nov. 26 — just before a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas — Homan accused the Biden administration of “bragging” about how quickly children are released from custody, and Not “properly screening” adults. Sponsors in America.
“Shame on them,” he said of the Biden administration. “They have over 300,000 children that they have released. [to] Unresearched sponsors they can’t find.”
“A lot of people are going into forced labor. A lot of people are into the forced sex trade,” Homan added. “We need to save these children.”
In his October debate against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walls, J.D. Vance also said the Department of Homeland Security “effectively lost” a total of 320,000 refugee children.
Concerns over the plight of migrant children were also highlighted earlier this week when authorities in Texas shared a photo of a two-year-old girl from El Salvador holding a piece of paper with a phone number at the border. The piece was holding.
Rep. Mark Green, Republican of Tennessee, told the New York Post that “countless children are at risk or unaccounted for by the oversight of safety.”
“Failure to protect vulnerable alien children from abuse, exploitation and human trafficking will be one of the failures of the Biden-Harris administration.”
Are the children really missing?
According to immigration experts and lawyers, massive claims From an August report. From the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, which found that 32,000 unaccompanied minors failed to appear for court dates in immigration courts from 2019-2019.
The report found that 291,000 migrant children received no court notice. It also called on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to “take immediate action to ensure the safety” of unaccompanied immigrant children in the US.
The Office of the Inspector General reported that immigrant children “who do not appear in court are considered to be at high risk of trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.”
But Aaron Richlin Melnick, policy director of the immigrant advocacy group American Immigration Council, told the BBC that the figures indicated a bureaucratic “paperwork issue” rather than “anything untoward”. do
“When you hear the phrase ‘missing,’ you think there’s a child that someone is trying to find and can’t,” he said.
“That’s not the case here. The government has made no effort to locate these children.”
Experts say many of the children may be at addresses the government has on file, but were unable to provide their court dates.
“It doesn’t mean anything bad happened to them,” said Mr. Rechlin Melnik. “That means you missed the court hearing.”
Mr Richlin Melnik added that there were “valid concerns” about exploitation.
“However, we cannot suggest that all 320,000 of these children are being trafficked for labor,” she said.
Eric Roark, an immigration researcher at NoUSA — which calls for tighter border controls — said tracking children is difficult “due to some combination of apathy, incompetence and bureaucratic incompetence.”
“Many, hopefully even most, caregivers are safe with sponsors,” he added. “But the Biden administration can’t really say one way or the other, and apparently doesn’t care enough to know.”
What happens to children at the border?
Minors detained at the U.S.-Mexico border go through a complex process that begins with detention and processing by Customs and Border Patrol, or CBP.
If the child is from a foreign country other than Mexico or Canada, he or she is placed in removal proceedings and transferred to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS.
HHS, through its Office of Refugee Resettlement Office, provides child care in a network of state-licensed providers.
The office tries to reunite children with family members or individual or organizational sponsors in the U.S. — who in turn are obligated to make sure they get to immigration court dates.
What can the Trump administration do?
Homan and other Trump administration officials have not yet provided many details about how they plan to address the problems facing undocumented minors in detention.
Several immigration attorneys contacted by the BBC suggested the administration could make it more difficult for undocumented children to become “sponsors,” even if the sponsor is not a family member.
In practice, this would mean more undocumented children being detained.
“They could do what the Obama administration did, and detain them,” said Alexander Keok, an immigration attorney and Case Western Reserve University professor.
The controversial “Remain in Mexico” program could also be applied to children, forcing them to wait across the border for the outcome of immigration proceedings.
“I’m not sure they even know what they’re going to do to the kids,” Mr. Cuik said of the Trump administration. “But there’s a boundary issue that they’re trying to figure out first, and that’s the first concern is whether they’re going to be harsh on both children and adults.”
When the BBC asked Trump’s transition team what plans they had for undocumented migrant children, spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said only that children were “disappearing” because of “Democrats’ wide-open border policies.” are
“President Trump and the leaders of his administration will make good on their promise to end the attack on our southern border that harms innocent children,” he added.