As of May 2024, there are 291,000 migrant children who arrived in the US as unaccompanied minors who were set free and never given a date to appear in immigration court — meaning there is no way to track their whereabouts.
That is in addition to the 32,000 children that Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities released into the US with hearing dates but then failed to show in court, according to the 14-page report — which tracked a period from October 2018 to September 2023.
One federal whistleblower said that she believes many of these vulnerable kids could already be in the hands of criminals and sex traffickers.
Tara Rodas, who was recruited as a federal government employee to help the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with an influx of migrant kids in 2021, believed she would be doing noble work.
However, she told The Post she was shocked to find she was handing those children to “traffickers, members of transnational criminal organizations, bad actors, bad, bad, bad people.”
When migrants cross the border illegally as children and are apprehended by border agents, they are released to HHS, which helps them connect with their sponsor in the US.
That sponsor doesn’t have to be a family member and during their vetting process are never required to meet with HHS officials in person.
The vetting is typically done over the phone, said Rodas.
“At the very beginning of the Biden administration, they stripped all the vetting out of the process,” Rodas said.
