How up to 300k migrant children have disappeared in the US

Insiders have exposed the “conveyor belt” of rape and abuse of vulnerable migrant children in the US under Biden’s border free-for-all to The Post, now being cleared up by President Trump.

Following Tom Homan’s recent revelation on Miranda Divine’s Pod Force One show that children had been trafficked across the country with little oversight before President Trump took office, whistleblowers have exposed how the terrifying scheme works.

Between 2019 and 2023, there were 448,000 unaccompanied minors who were encountered by the Department of Homeland Security, according to its figures, who were then transferred into the US.

Many of the children, sometimes younger than five, arrive with little more than phone numbers scribbled on their arms or clothes.

Much of it was a scam, perpetrated by cartels who saw Biden’s lax border policies – which saw eight million attempt to cross into the US during his time in office, per official figures – as an opportunity.

“The smugglers would drop off kids at the border, Customs and Border Protection couldn’t do anything with them, they have to get them to the Office of Refugee Resettlement within 72 hours.

“Once they get there, non-government contractors [private companies] look at the paperwork and say ‘this is their sponsor, this is where they are to be delivered,’” Morgan Lerette, a former Blackwater contractor and Army intelligence officer told The Post.

“But they weren’t confirming that it was a real person, family, or addresses that was given – some addresses were storage units or strip clubs.

“The officers were literally handing the kids right back off to the other side of the smuggling rings in the US,” he alleged.

Another twisted smuggling scheme was exposed in 2024, when Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) busted a ring who were bringing kids under five, some sedated with melatonin gummies, over the border.

The smugglers tried to sneak the kids from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico to Laredo, Texas by using the birth certificates of actual US citizen children, according to a release by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

They then dropped the kids off at stash houses, who passed them further into the US.

In that case, Vanessa Valadez, 23, pleaded guilty to smuggling one child after being caught. Five co-conspirators aged between 20 and 47 also pleaded guilty, according to ICE. Sources confirmed to The Post such schemes were common across the entire Southern border.

Once in the US, unaccompanied or smuggled kids face grim fates.

“It’s sex trafficking, child labor, exploiting the families,” said Lerette, who blames the government-funded organizations and private security companies the unaccompanied children are handed off to.

“American taxpayers are essentially paying for child sex trafficking,” he said.

“It’s a conveyor belt. It’s all about using private military companies and nonprofits to shift accountability. But DHS owns the entire supply chain, just through contracts,” Lerette charged.

Once out of federal view, Lerette says, the Department of Homeland Security has “plausible deniability” for anything that later happens to them.

A Border Patrol agent with over 22 years of experience, who asked to remain anonymous, backed Lerette’s claims up, telling The Post: “Anyone could claim they are parents or relatives of the children and there was no way to verify it.

“All anyone had to go off is unverified claims by the children themselves or phone numbers. [Contractors] don’t contact Border Patrol or ICE or immigration again to say, ‘hey, can you check this person out,’” he warned.

Since the Trump administration came to power in January it has put measures in place to combat minors being handed off to strangers.

Alleged sponsors were previously able to present foreign passports, but now they must present a US form of identification or proof they have a pending green card. They must also have proof of income such as pay stubs or a tax return as well as agreeing to be fingerprinted and, if they claim the child is part of their family, DNA testing.

The number of minors who have slipped through the cracks is alarming. The DHS Officer of the Inspector General said in March 233,000 children had not been issued paperwork by ICE, and now had to be located.

A report by the office noted many of those children had been released successfully to sponsors, but ICE was not always notified. However, it also noted a further 31,000 unaccompanied minors had an incorrect, commercial or no address for their sponsors and a further 43,000 did not appear for scheduled court appearances. The Department of Health and Human Services puts the number of migrant children they could not reach at 85,000, according to the New York Times.

Homan has said ICE is prioritizing tracking missing children down, but described harrowing scenarios agents have encountered, such as how they found a 14-year-old pregnant girl living with adult men, as well as minors forced into servitude on ranches and chicken farms.

Investigations into migrant child labor have turned up children working in slaughterhouses, sewing tags into T-shirts, doing woodwork and working in the fields for products destined to be sold by the best-known brands in the US, all across the country. Many unaccompanied children have to send money to families back home or to pay off those who smuggle them into the country, and use fake IDs to secure work. Numbers are hard to quantify, but some have suggested up to 75% of those who enter the country unaccompanied end up working.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration also cancelled a contract with Southwest Key, the nation’s largest private care provider for unaccompanied minors, in March.  

The company had received nearly $3 billion from the federal government and operates 29 shelters across Texas, Arizona, and California which can house up to 6,350 children at a time.

However, it was subject to a lawsuit last year from the Department of Justice which alleged that from 2015 to 2023, Southwest Key employees subjected children to “severe and pervasive sexual harassment,” including rape, solicitation of sex acts, and inappropriate touching. 

The complaint details over 100 reports of abuse, with employees accused of exploiting children’s vulnerabilities: language barriers, trauma, and isolation in countries where they have no family.

One chilling incident from a 2022 Southwest Key report included in the lawsuit described a Youth Care Worker at Casa Franklin in El Paso, Texas, who allegedly repeatedly abused a five-year-old girl, an eight-year-old girl, and an eleven-year-old girl. 

The eight-year-old claimed the worker entered their bedrooms at night to touch their “private area” and threatened to kill their families if they spoke out. 

In another incident detailed in the complaint at Casa Montezuma in Channelview, Texas, a teenage girl wrote of her alleged abuser: “He can do whatever he pleases because he is a Shift Leader, he’s the boss.” She also claims he raped her and demanded nude photos.

“Southwest Key failed to consistently correct its practices and permitted the harassment to continue without adequate intervention,” the DOJ’s complaint claims.

In a response to the complaint, Southwest Key said it does not present an accurate picture of what the organization does or the level of care it gives to vulnerable youth and children.

However, after Trump pulled the plug on its funding the company was forced to furlough 5,000 staff. The lawsuit against Southwest Key was also dropped.