Biden’s HHS Lost Nearly Half the Unaccompanied Migrant Children Released to ‘Sponsors’

Data recently obtained by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) shows that during the first two years of the Biden administration the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) lost contact and could not determine the safety status of roughly half (48 percent) of all unaccompanied alien children (UAC) after transferring the children into the custody of a “sponsor”.

Under HHS’ UAC sponsorship program, a “sponsor” could be a close or distant family member of the UAC or may have no family relation at all. The goal of HHS’ UAC sponsorship program was to place unaccompanied alien children who were apprehended by immigration authorities into the homes of sponsors instead of detention facilities while they await immigration proceedings. While the intent of the program may have had good intentions, in 2022, reports emerged that many of the UACs transferred to sponsors ended up being exploited for labor and found themselves in dangerous living and working conditions, and/or victims of an array of human trafficking crimes.

 An integral part of assuring the safety of the UAC sponsorship program was HHS’s policy of conducting a “Safety and Well-Being Follow Up Call” with UACs and their sponsors 30 days after the release date. According to HHS’s policy guidelines, the purpose of the Safety and Well-Being Follow Up Call was:

to determine whether the child is still residing with the sponsor, is enrolled in or attending school, is aware of upcoming court dates, and is safe. The care provider must document the outcome of the follow up call in the child’s case file, including if the care provider is unable to contact the sponsor or child after reasonable efforts have been exhausted. 

The data recently obtain by CIS as part of a lengthy and ongoing Freedom of Information Act litigation demonstrated that HHS lost contact with 112,872 UACs after 30 days of being released to sponsors, between January 1, 2021, and December 31, 2023, and the UAC’s safety or whereabouts could not be determined.

Publicly available data from HHS demonstrates that for fiscal years 2021 and 2022 (i.e., October 1, 2020, through September 30, 2023), roughly the same time period reflected in the data received by CIS, HHS transferred 235,249 UACs into the custody of sponsors around the United States. Thus, based on the data CIS received from its FOIA request, it appears that during the first two years of the Biden administration, HHS lost contact and could not determine the safety or whereabouts of roughly half (48 percent) of all UACs it transferred to sponsors across the country. 

Concerningly, despite HHS’s knowledge of its inability to assure the safety of nearly half of the total UACs it transferred to sponsors in fiscal year 2021 (107,752) and 2022 (127,512), the UAC program continued with little to no change in policy. Thus, it can be assumed that the safety and whereabouts of a large portion of the UACs subsequently transferred to sponsors in fiscal years 2023 (113,484) and 2024 (99,326) under the Biden administration are also unknown.

CIS is currently in several other FOIA lawsuits against HHS to obtain more up-to-date and granular data regarding the total number of lost UACs, their last known locations, and the “category” of sponsor to whom the missing UACs were transferred. There are four categories of sponsors: “Category 1” represents a parents or legal guardians, “Category 2” represents immediate family members, “Category 3” represents unrelated individuals, and “Category 4” often represents foster care programs.

Click this link to see the raw data CIS recently obtained, which includes the total number of UACs missing from each zip code in the United States. States with zip codes that had the most missing UACs include Texas, Illinois, Tennessee, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Florida, and Georgia. (Note: a CIS analyst added a column to the data to indicate the U.S. state associated with each zip code. Some zip codes were redacted (i.e., “b(6)”) by HHS and CIS continues to litigate the legitimacy of those redactions.)