The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has launched an investigation into thousands of cases involving unaccompanied migrant children who may have been placed in the hands of human traffickers and sexual predators due to lax vetting policies under the Biden administration.

An internal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) memo, reviewed by The Post, outlines how the agency prioritized speed over safety, placing children in dangerous and exploitative situations through the Unaccompanied Children Program (UAC).

The report highlights multiple cases of fraudulent sponsorship applications, where ORR failed to conduct thorough reviews before releasing children.

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In one instance, a sponsor submitted an altered photo that appeared to have a mother crudely photoshopped into the image to claim a relationship with the child.

The editing job was so poorly done that the mother’s feet were cut off in the final image.

In another case, an applicant presented a Guatemalan photo ID that was clearly fake, yet it was still accepted without challenge.

A separate incident involved a 23-year-old migrant claiming to be a minor who was placed in a federal facility alongside children. The man was later reported to have asked children, “You want to have sex?”

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A senior HHS source told The Post, “It was all about getting them out of custody as quickly as possible from the time the Border Patrol encountered them, to the time ORR found sponsorship.

When they were putting expediency over safety, that’s what created this problem.”

The HHS Office of the General Counsel conducted an investigation into ORR’s vetting process and found “significant issues” in screening sponsors.

The report concluded that these failures led to children being placed in “overcrowded or unsafe living conditions” or in situations where they were “extorted or exploited.”

The data revealed that in recent years, less than 1% of sponsorship applications were denied, exposing major gaps in oversight.

Despite investigators briefing Biden’s HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra’s chief of staff and deputy secretary about these troubling cases, the Biden administration reportedly took “no meaningful steps” to address the problem.

The report characterized the administration’s handling of the crisis as a “heinous dereliction of duty”, calling for immediate reforms to protect vulnerable children.

According to the investigation, 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children arrived in the U.S. as of May 2024.

In a stunning DHS report (released in the middle of the DNC), the Harris-Biden admin admitted HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of smuggled children are now missing — likely sold into sex and labor trafficking.

That’s dramatically higher than the 85K number previously reported. pic.twitter.com/AZYbOzpMhK

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) August 20, 2024

Many were released without being given a court date, making it nearly impossible to track their whereabouts.

Additionally, 32,000 more children were released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with hearing dates, but later failed to appear in court, according to a 14-page report tracking data from October 2018 to September 2023.

A federal whistleblower raised concerns last August, warning that many of these children may have already fallen into the hands of criminals and traffickers.

The HHS investigation aims to prevent similar failures from happening again. A senior official involved in the probe stated, “What we want to do with the internal investigation is go back and make sure that we looked under every stone that they turned over.”

The Office of Refugee Resettlement’s proposed reforms include:

• Fingerprinting and DNA testing to verify the identity of sponsors
• Enhanced background checks for potential caregivers
• Facial recognition technology and post-release monitoring to track the safety of migrant children

A second senior HHS source confirmed that some of these changes are already being implemented.

“The fingerprinting recommendation, it’s already implemented. And that has been put out in the field guidance to ensure that all adult household members, their sponsors are fingerprinted and that’s checked and verified before they’re released. Which again, seems completely obvious, but it wasn’t happening,” the source told The Post.

The same official noted that the lack of basic vetting techniques under previous leadership created dangerous vulnerabilities.

“In the last administration, they weren’t even fingerprinting sponsors. We didn’t know who those people were that we were releasing kids to,” the source said.

As the investigation continues, Trump administration sources are also pushing for additional measures to seal the pipeline that puts migrant children in harm’s way.

The ongoing review is expected to lead to sweeping reforms aimed at tightening security and accountability within the ORR’s handling of migrant children.

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