U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched an initiative with law enforcement partners to protect the hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied children smuggled over the border under the Biden administration.
The partnership, called the UAC Safety Verification Initiative, seeks to combat the exploitation of children by conducting welfare checks. Florida’s law enforcement partners rolled out the program on November 10.
“Secretary Noem is leading efforts to rescue and stop the exploitation of the 450,000 unaccompanied children the Biden administration lost or placed with unvetted sponsors,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “Many of the children who came across the border unaccompanied were allowed to be placed with sponsors who were smugglers and sex traffickers. The Trump administration has located more than 24,400 of these children in-person, in the United States, through visits and door knocks.”
“We’ve jump-started our efforts to rescue children who were victims of sex and labor trafficking by working with our state and local law enforcement partners to locate these children,” she continued. “President Trump and Secretary Noem are laser-focused on protecting children and will continue to work with federal, state, and local law enforcement to reunite children with their families.”
Earlier this year, law enforcement agencies’ efforts to safeguard children led to the discovery of sponsors possessing child sex abuse materials, forced child labor, and neglect. They found that children were being placed with sponsors with criminal records.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) previously found more than 65,000 abuse reports concerning unaccompanied migrant children. Grassley wrote in a May letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that an inspector general report found that “HHS was not only responsible for failing to adequately vet sponsors, but also failed under the Biden Administration to provide necessary information to law enforcement at DHS to help them find and protect children, and get them into immigration proceedings.”
