Exclusive | Trump admin launches probe into extremely lax HHS vetting for migrant kids that left thousands vulnerable to sex trafficking and exploitation

The Department of Health and Human Services is launching an investigation into thousands of cases of unaccompanied migrant children who may have ended up in the hands of sexual predators and human traffickers because of lax vetting policies under the Biden administration.

An internal memo viewed by The Post details how the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) ignored obvious safety risks and prioritized quickly releasing the youths under the Unaccompanied Children Program (UAC), creating a situation that made vulnerable kids easy targets.

The report details egregious cases where migrant sponsors provided images that were obviously fake or doctored in their applications to obtain custody of children — and were seldom challenged by government staff tasked with protecting kids.

One photo, submitted by a man who wanted custody of a migrant child, showed the child’s mother crudely photoshopped into the image to claim he had a relationship with her. The mother’s feet were clipped off in the botched clip-art job.

In another case, a man used a Guatemalan photo ID that clearly was not him.

Another incident had a 23-year-old migrant who claimed he was a minor being held in a federal facility with migrant children. The man was documented reportedly asking kids “You want to have sex?”

“It was all about getting them out of custody as quickly as possible from the time the Border Patrol encountered them, to the time ORR found sponsorship,” a senior HHS source told The Post.

“When they were putting expediency over safety, that’s what created this problem.”

The investigation by the HHS Office of the General Counsel found “significant issues” in vetting sponsors, which enabled children to be placed in “overcrowded or unsafe living conditions” or with adults “extorting or exploiting children.”

Data revealed that less than 1% of sponsorship applications were denied in recent years, showcasing major gaps in oversight of the program.

Despite investigators briefing Biden HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra’s chief of staff and deputy secretary about these horrific cases, the Biden administration allegedly took “no meaningful steps” to address the issue, according to the report.

“This was a heinous dereliction of duty by the Biden administration and must be immediately rectified in order to protect vulnerable children,” the report states.

As of May 2024, 291,000 migrant children arrived in the US as unaccompanied minors who were set free without so much as a date to appear in immigration court, meaning there was no way to track their whereabouts.

On top of that, 32,000 additional children were released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into the US with hearing dates, but then failed to show up in court, according to a 14-page report that tracked a period from October 2018 to September 2023.

One federal whistleblower said last August that she believes many of these children may have already fallen into the hands of criminals and sex traffickers.

The primary aim of the HHS probe is to ensure nothing like this can happen again, the HHS source said.

Trump administration sources also want to seal the pipeline that results in unaccompanied migrant children being placed in harm’s way.

“What we want to do with the internal investigation is go back and make sure that we looked under every stone that they turned over,” the HHS source said.

The report on the Office of Refugee Resettlement outlined sweeping changes to improve sponsor vetting and boost oversight.

The proposed reforms include implementing methods like fingerprinting and mandatory DNA testing to confirm the identities of sponsors for migrant kids, increasing the prevalence of background checks for care providers and beefing up technological solutions like facial recognition and post-release monitoring.

“The fingerprinting recommendation, it’s already implemented. And that has been put out in the field guidance to ensure that all adult household members, their sponsors are fingerprinted and that’s checked and verified before they’re released. Which again, seems completely obvious, but it wasn’t happening,” the source told The Post.

A second senior HHS source told The Post this change is in stark contrast with the previous administration, which let even basic vetting techniques go by the wayside.

“In the last administration, they weren’t even fingerprinting sponsors. We didn’t know who those people were that we were releasing kids to.”