ICE unable to supervise unaccompanied minors released into US

By Bethany Blankley | Employee at The Center Square

(Worthy News) – The U.S. Department of Homeland Security Inspector General has issued an alert to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to notify them of an urgent problem: ICE is unable to properly oversee hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied children (UACs) released into the country by the Biden-Harris administration.

“We have found that ICE is not always able to verify the location and status of unaccompanied migrant children released from DHS and HHS custody,” HHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari said in a memo to the deputy director of ICE.

“Without the ability to monitor the location and status of UCs, ICE has no assurance that UCs are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor,” the warning said.

In response, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, asked for additional information from HHS on UAC oversight, saying “lax screening has put migrant children at grave risk of exploitation and abuse and makes it difficult to locate these children after placement, which I believe also hampers the work of DHS.”

The DHS OIG report found that ICE not only failed to monitor the location and status of all UACs, but also failed to initiate removal proceedings when necessary.

Between fiscal years 2019 and 2023, ICE transferred more than 448,000 UACs to the care of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is responsible for their care. During the same period, ICE failed to issue a notice of appearance (NTA) before an immigration judge for 65 percent of UACs transferred from DHS custody, the OIG report found, leaving them in a limbo.

Of the 448,000 UACs who entered the country illegally and were placed with sponsors through ORR, the majority arrived under the Biden-Harris administration: about 366,000, or 81%, between budget years 2021 and 2023, Grassley noted.

The OIG report also found that ICE agents failed to issue NTAs for immigration court hearings to all UACs marked for deportation, despite being required to do so under federal law.

According to the report, ICE failed to issue NTAs to at least 291,000 UACs who should have been placed in removal proceedings but were not as of May 2024.

“ICE was unable to determine the whereabouts of all UCs released by HHS who did not appear in immigration court on their scheduled dates,” the report said.

At least 32,000 UACs who were issued NTAs failed to show up for their immigration court hearings, and ICE does not know where they are. In addition, ICE did not always notify ORR when UACs failed to show up, contributing to multiple agencies’ inability to track their whereabouts, the report found.

To make matters worse, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations agents weren’t looking for them at all, the report found.

Agents from only one of the eight ICE ERO offices visited by OIG staff said they had attempted to locate missing UACs.

Several audit reports have shown that federal agencies are failing to schedule immigration court dates on a recurring basis.

A study from January 2021 through February 2024 found that 200,000 asylum or other immigration cases were dismissed because DHS failed to file necessary documents with the court in time for scheduled hearings, The Center Square reported.

Prior to that, 50,000 illegal aliens released by ICE into the U.S. failed to report for their deportation proceedings during a five-month period analyzed in 2021, The Center Square reported. ICE also lacked court records on more than 40,000 individuals it was supposed to prosecute, the report said, and more than 270,000 illegal aliens were released into the U.S. “with little chance of deportation” during that period, the report found.

The lack of knowledge of the UACs’ whereabouts “was due in part to ICE’s lack of an automated process for sharing information internally between the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA) and ERO, and externally with stakeholders, such as HHS and the Department of Justice (DOJ), regarding UCs who fail to appear in immigration court,” the OIG report found.

ICE-ERO also has no formal policy or process for identifying UACs who fail to appear for court hearings, has limited oversight of monitoring them, and faces limited resources, the OIG said. Nevertheless, “ICE must take immediate action to ensure the safety” of UACs and provide them with the corrective measures it will take.

UACs who miss their court hearings “are considered at increased risk of trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor,” the OIG said.

Earlier this year, Grassley led a group of 44 senators to introduce a resolution to reform oversight of the ORR after multiple allegations of sexual abuse of UACs were reported and more than 100,000 UACs appeared to have gone missing, The Center Square reported.

Texas, California and Florida received the most UACs of any state, The Center Square first reported. Every state received record numbers in fiscal year 2023. For some states, the fiscal year 2023 numbers represent 20% or more of the total they received since 2015, or exceed previous years’ numbers.

Reprinted with permission from The Center Square.