Chad Wolf & Robert Law: Audit Reveals Biden-Harris’ Latest Immigration Nightmare

While the media was focused on Chicago this week as Vice President Kamala Harris officially accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, an alarming new report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general should have been the top news story across the country.

The bottom line is that the Biden-Harris administration has lost track of approximately 32,000 unaccompanied alien children within the immigration enforcement system after they were released from federal custody. This alarming finding is unacceptable and inconsistent with American values.

Migrants walk along a highway in southern Mexico, July 21, 2024, as they travel north toward the U.S. border. (AP photo/Edgar H. Clemente)

But you probably haven’t heard about this yet, because the government is not addressing the problem directly and the liberal media is largely ignoring the report.

ICE HAS DELAYED TENS OF THOUSANDS OF MIGRANT CHILDREN, DHS INSPECTOR GENERAL DISCOVERS

As we have warned for years, the Biden-Harris administration’s open border policies and failure to enforce immigration law have created an unprecedented humanitarian and security crisis at the southern border. Of the more than 10 million illegal aliens encountered at the border, more than 500,000 are vulnerable migrant children who have been trafficked or smuggled.

The physical, mental and sexual abuse that migrant children are subjected to during the journey to our border has been widely documented.

Last year, the New York Times published a series of heartbreaking articles detailing the lives of sex trafficking and forced labor that many in the U.S. are subjected to in order to pay off their smuggling debts. The Times also reported that the government had lost track of 85,000 unaccompanied foreign children, but the shocking revelation was barely covered by the press and no government officials were fired.

HARRIS FAILED TO FIGHT ‘ROOT CAUSES’ OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, FORMER BORDER PATROL CHIEF SAYS

We now know the problem is far more serious, but it is doubtful that the Biden-Harris administration will be held accountable before Americans go to the polls.

Below is a summary of the Biden-Harris administration’s policies that resulted in 32,000 vulnerable migrant children being returned to their traffickers within our borders.

First, it is important to understand that dealing with unaccompanied foreign children is incredibly difficult. There are loopholes in the law that limit the government’s ability to quickly return migrant children to their families in their home countries.

HARRIS-WALZ THINKS THEY CAN FOOL US BY BELIEVING IN A FANTASY ABOUT THEIR IMMIGRATION POLICY

The Biden-Harris administration’s decision to end the Migrant Protection Protocols and exempt unaccompanied foreign children from immediate expulsion at the border under Title 42 guaranteed that they would be released into American communities.

As a result, the number of migrant children transferred from Homeland Security to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), as required by law, rose from 15,128 in FY 2020 during the Trump administration to 120,859 in FY 2021 during the Biden-Harris administration. The numbers have remained high since then.

Unable to accommodate the growing number of migrant children in HHS facilities, the Biden-Harris administration made the misguided decision to accelerate their release to adult sponsors.

BIDEN-HARRIS HELPING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS AND MAKING AMERICANS PAY FOR IT

First, the administration began releasing unaccompanied alien children without giving them a Notice to Appear, the charging document that places them in deportation proceedings. When it still couldn’t keep up with the influx, it ended the Trump administration’s policy of conducting pre-release inspections of the minors’ intended homes and then began turning migrant children over to unvetted adults who showed up to pick them up.

So while the inspector general’s report is alarming, it is entirely predictable. The audit found that nearly 30,000 unaccompanied alien children who received a notice to appear failed to show up in immigration court.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINIONS

In addition, 291,000 migrant children who have not received the necessary papers have completely disappeared and the government has no idea where they are.

As the inspector general put it, “By not issuing an NTA to all (unaccompanied alien children), ICE limits the opportunity to have contact with them when they are released from HHS custody, thereby diminishing the ability to verify their safety.”

It further states that “without the ability to monitor the location and status of (migrant children), ICE has no assurance that (they) will be safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The timing of this report should be particularly illuminating. It was released just one day after the left approved its latest policy platform, which endorsed amnesty for nearly every illegal alien in the country, including human traffickers.

The Biden-Harris administration campaigned on a “compassionate” immigration policy in 2020, but the results of their failed strategy over the past three and a half years paint a very different reality.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM CHAD WOLF

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM ROBERT LAW

Robert Law is director of the Center for Homeland Security & Immigration at the America First Policy Institute and former head of the Office of Policy & Strategy at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Trump administration.