The Department of Homeland Security is touting an effort to save children who may be facing exploitation as a result of having an "unvetted" sponsor when they entered the country illegally.
Last week, the Trump administration noted that there were 300,000 children who were "lost or placed with unvetted sponsors" during the Biden administration that came over unaccompanied, raising concern that they were placed with traffickers, and they say 13,000 have already been found.
"It just shows how unconscionable the previous administration was on the immigration issue," former acting ICE Director Jonathan Fahey told Fox News Digital in an interview.
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In addition, DHS said in a recent news release that over 59,000 of the 65,000 "backlogged reports" on the children have been worked through, including thousands of "leads" regarding criminal issues. Fahey, who briefly led the agency at the tail end, but also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for DHS, said there's typically a process to ensure that migrant children are going to the right person.
"What it could look like and normally would look like is if somebody is an unaccompanied minor and they're being sent to, there's somebody that's a sponsor for them, they should be vetting the sponsor, making sure the sponsor is who they say they are, and also having some sort of follow up to make sure they're going where they say their going and things like that," Fahey said.
He also noted how the recent Trump-backed government spending bill, which includes funding for more immigration authorities and tools, could be helpful to busting more exploitative activity.
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"I think there will be many more [busts], mainly because now that with this bill that passed, there's going to be more resources to be able to investigate various types of crime," he said.
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The bill includes funding for 10,000 more ICE agents, and the administration launched an aggressive recruitment effort on Tuesday, touting $50,000 signing bonuses and other perks to get people to join.
"Because right now, as you know, ICE, even though they're working their butts off and highly motivated and mission-focused and everything else, they still need more resources to really track things down and find victims and find bad actors and things like that. So I think [the locating of children] will go up a lot."
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"The other part that will help is because the border now, I don't want to say completely shut down, but almost shut down. There's relatively few new people getting through, you know. And anyone getting caught is not being released," he added.
"You're limiting the incoming, so you are able to deal with the interior, I think, a lot more effectively," he added.
Numerous busts, which oftentimes come from prior information received and even criminal search warrants, were noted by DHS, including during Homeland Security Investigations' worksite enforcement and welfare checks at homes.
