Tom Homan Explains How Biden Admin Made Lost Migrant Kids Harder To Find

WASHINGTON — A lack of oversight under former President Joe Biden has given the Trump administration a harder job in locating missing migrant children, White House border czar Tom Homan said Wednesday.

The Biden administration handed off numerous unaccompanied migrant children to adult “sponsors” without properly verifying where the supposed caretakers lived or other information, giving authorities few leads on finding the children now, Homan said in a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C. Due to this “incompetence,” finding the more than 300,000 migrant children that the Biden administration lost track of is the hardest job Homan faces, he said.

“You all know, you all own cars … you got credit cards, you pay utility bills. We know how to find you,” the border czar told his audience. “Children don’t have that digital footprint, which means we got to count on the digital footprint of the so-called sponsors they release these children to. And when they didn’t fingerprint them, when they didn’t double-check their identity or address they provided, it makes it hard. Who are these sponsors?”

“Many of the addresses we’re going to now are a parking lot, a park-and-ride, a grocery store, church,” Homan said.

Children released en masse are more vulnerable to human trafficking and other exploitation than other migrants crossing the U.S. border, the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned in 2024.

“Of course, the media says is looking for children to deport them,” Homan said Wednesday. “HSI is looking for children to make sure they’re safe, to make sure they’re not victims of sex trafficking and labor trafficking. That’s what we’re doing.”