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On August 19th, 2024, the Department of Homeland Security announced that they had lost track of over 300,000 children. But what exactly does this mean?
Since 2021, an average of 400 unaccompanied children have been smuggled into the United States every day.
These children, who cross into the United States without parents, are subsequently detained, processed by the federal government’s unaccompanied children program and eventually released into the country.
Per the DHS’ August 19th announcement, 291,000 of the 300,000 unaccounted-for children were released into the United States without a scheduled court date, while another 32,000, who were given court dates, never showed up for their scheduled court appearance.
In June of 2024, an insider from the department of Health and Human Services provided Muckraker with a list detailing the names of over 8,000 alien children, and their last known addresses. So, we began an operation to find the missing children ourselves.
Over the course of our investigation, we discovered the dangerous places where children have been delivered, confronted a CIA contractor who moves these children, heard shocking stories from children who the federal government has lost track of, and exposed a child trafficking network in Florida.
Children and minors who enter the United States illegally and without parents are subsequently detained and placed in holding camps while the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR for short) works to find the child a permanent home through their Unaccompanied Children or UC Program.
The goal of the UC Program is to place alien children with vetted sponsors who are typically relatives or close family friends. However, it is well documented that this program has placed children in the hands of criminal organizations such as MS13, as well as labor and sex trafficking rings.
We began our investigation by door-knocking the addresses of the most vulnerable children on our list, focusing on the youngest who were at the highest risk of trafficking.
One of our first finds was an abandoned house where two boys aged 7 and 10 had allegedly been delivered. It is unclear what happened to the boys who were delivered to the sponsor at this address, we were ultimately unable to locate them.
Our investigation eventually led us to the projects of the Bronx, where we found a girl who told us a horror story from inside the facility she was detained in at Pomona, California.
The girl pictured above, who we will call Alexa, was ultimately placed with a safe sponsor. However, she told us that while in a holding facility in Pomona, California, she encountered children who would cry because they were being sent to a sponsor who they did not know.
Alexa explained how children are woken up at 3 o’clock in the morning taken from the holding facility to their sponsors without the opportunity to say goodbye to their friends.
Alexa also told us about a friend of hers who was with her at the Pomona, California facility. Alexa and her friend had agreed to contact each other on Facebook once they were placed safely with their sponsors. Unfortunately, Alexa never heard from her friend again. It is unclear what the fate of her friend ultimately was.
The federal government uses contractors to move the children from detention centers, like the one Alexa was held at, into the hands of their sponsors. One of these contractors is MVM, a private security contractor with ties to the CIA, NSA, FBI, and Homeland Security.
MVM’s work has included providing security at Guantanamo Bay, guarding CIA stations in Iraq, and conducting research for the FBI’s High Value Detainee Research Group which is responsible for conducting interrogations of terrorists.
Over the past few years, MVM has secured contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to escort detained alien children to their sponsors across America.
The three states which have received the most unaccompanied children since 2021 are Texas, California, and Florida, with each state taking in over 10,000 per year.
We learned that two illegal aliens from Guatemala named Baltazar and Juana had requested to sponsor 13 children across 5 different addresses in Bonita Springs, Florida. Even more concerning, was that these same addresses were also being used by other illegal aliens who were attempting to sponsor children.
At one particular two bedroom house, 13 children were being sponsored by 4 different adults.
We were told that this trafficking case had been reported to HSI, the FBI, and HHS, but after sitting on the case for years, none of these agencies made any progress.
