The Biden administration was a disaster for many reasons. Illegal immigration was a major one.
And now President Biden’s treasonous dereliction of duty has been detailed in an eyebrow-raising report that just dropped.
Biden’s Border Blunder: How Failed Policies Lost Track of Thousands of Migrant Kids and Fueled a Trafficking Crisis
The Biden administration’s immigration policies have unleashed a catastrophe at the U.S. southern border, and nowhere is this more evident than in the shocking findings of a March 2025 report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General. Titled “ICE Cannot Effectively Monitor the Location and Status of All Unaccompanied Alien Children After Federal Custody,” the report lays bare a grim reality: under Biden’s watch, the U.S. government has lost track of tens of thousands of unaccompanied alien children (UACs), leaving them vulnerable to trafficking, exploitation, and crime. This isn’t just mismanagement—it’s a policy-driven disaster that has turned a humanitarian crisis into a national security nightmare.
From fiscal years 2019 to 2023, ICE transferred over 448,000 UACs to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), with most released to sponsors. But here’s where Biden’s lax oversight kicks in: more than 31,000 of these kids had release addresses that were blank, undeliverable, or missing key details like apartment numbers. Imagine that—thousands of children handed off to supposed caretakers with no verifiable whereabouts. The report notes ICE wasn’t even aware of the locations of UACs who fled HHS custody, including one who ran away five times in a single year and another with an international arrest warrant for m*rder. Biden’s open-border approach didn’t just invite chaos; it practically rolled out the red carpet for it.
The numbers get worse. As of January 2025, ICE hadn’t served Notices to Appear (NTAs)—the critical first step to track these kids in immigration court—on over 233,000 UACs. That’s right: under Biden, a quarter-million children slipped through the cracks without even a court date to anchor their cases. By October 2024, more than 43,000 UACs who did get NTAs failed to show up for their hearings, and ICE couldn’t find over 3,600 of them because their addresses were useless. This isn’t a glitch; it’s a systemic failure rooted in Biden’s refusal to enforce immigration laws with any seriousness.
Why did this happen? The report points to a toxic mix of Biden-era policies and bureaucratic incompetence. ICE didn’t get consistent sponsor location data from HHS, thanks to a 2021 Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) that gutted information-sharing requirements—requirements that had existed under previous administrations to vet sponsors properly. HHS, under Biden’s directives, withheld critical details out of fear that ICE might actually enforce the law against dodgy sponsors. One ICE officer summed it up: getting info from HHS was “like pulling teeth.” Biden’s team chose political optics over child safety, and the result was a free-for-all for traffickers.
Then there’s the staffing crisis—another Biden failure. ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) was stretched thin, with just over 1,000 officers nationwide juggling 7.5 million non-detained cases, including UACs. In one field office, 10 officers were saddled with 300,000 cases—17,000 of them UACs—leaving them a measly three minutes per case per year. Biden’s administration didn’t prioritize resources to track these kids; instead, it focused on border “operations support” and chasing adults deemed bigger threats, leaving vulnerable children to fend for themselves in a system that couldn’t keep up.
The report’s site visits paint a chilling picture of where these kids ended up. ERO officers found sponsor addresses that were nonexistent, rundown apartment complexes with no doors, or dilapidated motels without kitchens. One location had bars on the inside of windows—a red flag for captivity—in a gang-ridden area with daily shootings. Another address, used five times for UAC releases, was a crime hotspot with stabbings and drug deals. Under Biden, HHS released over 14,500 UACs in FY 2023 alone to unrelated sponsors or distant relatives, including a 40-year-old “spouse” to a child. This isn’t compassion; it’s a pipeline to exploitation.
Biden’s policies didn’t just lose kids—they lost control. Over 600 UACs released to sponsors were later arrested, some for serious crimes like smuggling other children or stabbing someone to death. One runaway admitted to being part of a Mexican cartel, while another with a m*rder warrant vanished. The report warns that without tracking, ICE has “no assurance UACs are safe from trafficking, exploitation, forced labor, or involvement in criminal activities that may pose a risk to local communities.” Biden’s border leniency didn’t protect these kids; it handed them to predators.
The NTA backlog is a scandal in itself. Even after a 2024 management alert flagged the issue, ICE still couldn’t serve NTAs to over 49,000 UACs who crossed in 2021—kids who, four years later, have no court dates and no oversight. Biden’s team prioritized issuing NTAs to UACs nearing 18, when they’d become ICE’s problem anyway, but left younger kids adrift. One officer admitted they’d never catch up, drowned by a backlog Biden’s policies fueled and never addressed. This isn’t oversight; it’s abandonment.
HHS’s role under Biden was a masterclass in dropping the ball. The report notes HHS didn’t share safety check results or updated addresses with ICE, leaving ERO in the dark unless a tip or allegation surfaced. Over 570 trafficking-related incidents were reported to ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations from 2019 to 2023, but without proactive data-sharing, ICE was reactive at best. Biden’s 2021 MOA slashed sponsor vetting, reversing a 2018 agreement that had at least tried to keep kids safe. The result? A system where “no news is good news,” as one officer put it—until a kid turns up exploited or dead.
Legislation tied ICE’s hands, too, but Biden made it worse. The 2020 Consolidated Appropriations Act barred ICE from targeting sponsors based on HHS data, a restriction Biden embraced to avoid “kids in cages” headlines. Meanwhile, ERO had no ties with the Department of Labor to spot forced labor cases among UACs—another gap Biden ignored. With limited authority and no resources, ICE couldn’t intervene even when kids were clearly at risk. Biden’s obsession with optics over enforcement left these children defenseless.
The report’s four recommendations—revise MOAs, fix address data, clear the NTA backlog, and update guidance—sound nice, but they’re bandaids on a wound Biden’s policies ripped open. ICE concurred, promising action by September 2025, but that’s cold comfort when the damage is already done. Hundreds of thousands of UACs have been funneled into a broken system, with tens of thousands lost to who-knows-where, all because Biden prioritized open borders over accountability. This isn’t a glitch; it’s a betrayal of the vulnerable.
In the end, Biden’s immigration legacy is a trail of missing kids, unchecked sponsors, and a border crisis that spiraled into a human tragedy. The OIG report doesn’t just expose ICE’s struggles—it indicts a White House that chose ideology over safety. Trafficking, crime, and exploitation flourished under Biden’s watch, and the price was paid by the most defenseless: unaccompanied children swallowed by a system that forgot them. This wasn’t just a failure—it was a disaster, and America’s communities are still reeling from the fallout.
The Conservative Column will update you on any major immigration news and reports.
