Exclusive | HHS head subpoenaed over tens of thousands of missing migrant children by House panel investigating border crisis

A House committee investigating the ongoing border crisis has subpoenaed Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra for information about tens of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children who have disappeared in the US.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) forced Becerra, in a cover letter dated Thursday exclusively obtained by The Post that accompanied the subpoena, to hand over documents related to the “vetting, screening, and monitoring ” from migrant sponsors.

Without proper screening, migrant children are at risk of becoming victims of sex trafficking, forced labor and other forms of exploitation, according to the Homeland Security Inspector General report released last month.

HHS officials paused for more than a month and a half after the Homeland Security panel initially requested the data on August 12. The answers to the subpoena are due on October 3.

On Wednesday, the department ultimately turned over 717 pages of documents — but 400 of them “contained nothing more than publicly available information,” Green told Becerra.

“Absurdly, HHS has provided all of these publicly available pages with a disclaimer stating: ‘Produced to the Homeland Security Committee pursuant to an Oversight Request (;) Not to be disclosed without authorization from the Department of Health and Human Services,’” he added to it.

The remaining documents reproduced parts of ORR’s manual on procedures for unaccompanied migrant children, which were not relevant to the committee’s requests.

“The available statistics and data on unaccompanied alien children (or UACs) are extremely disturbing and represent a growing humanitarian crisis,” Green wrote.

“To date, HHS has denied the committee access to this vital information and refused to provide even an indication of the scope of the issue.”

However, the scope was alluded to in an Aug. 19 report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, which found that 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children who had entered the U.S. had been released without an immigration court date by May 2024 — and in no other way. to track their location.

Another 32,000 children released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into the US did not show up for court even when given an appearance date, the 14-page report also found.

The DHS Office of Inspector General (DHS OIG) audited eight ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations offices – and found that only one had even “attempted” to locate their group of missing immigrant children.

At another office, the percentage of notices to appear in immigration court was only 16%.

Between October 1, 2018 and September 30, 2023, ICE transferred a total of 448,820 unaccompanied children to HHS’ ORR, where they were then placed with sponsors nationwide.

In June 2023, Robin Dunn Marcos, a senior HHS official involved in the solo child migrant program, testified to the House Judiciary Committee that while agency officials are contacting the home countries where the unaccompanied alien children (UACs) are coming from , they don’t ask for criminal records.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said last month that HHS’s loss of count of migrant children was “the equivalent of a modern-day slavery operation” and called for “emergency hearings.”

“The southern border is a national security disaster and a humanitarian catastrophe and Kamala Harris cannot be trusted to solve it,” Johnson told reporters on a phone call last month.

Republicans in Congress first raised concerns about the alarming number of missing migrant children following a New York Times report in February 2023, which claimed that HHS had failed to contact 85,000 unaccompanied minors living in sponsors were placed after entering the US.

Green asked HHS in his Thursday letter to disclose the extent to which potential sponsors were excluded by ORR from taking in migrant children, how many sponsors the agency has been unable to maintain contact with, and how many have been convicted or investigated for crimes such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect or child abandonment.

The Homeland Security panel also wants to review data on any sponsors who provided fraudulent information, an issue that earlier this summer stalled one of DHS’s parole programs, which allows 30,000 migrants a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela could fly in.

In 2022, Becerra pressured staff to release migrant children to sponsors as quickly as possible, likening the ideal attrition to an “assembly line,” the Times reported.

The Post has reached out to HHS representatives for comment.