Biden’s Other Border Scandal: 320,000 Migrant Children Are Missing 

September 24, 2024

By Dale Wilcox

There is no group of people more vulnerable and in need of protection from the powerful than children, yet the most powerful government in the world has allowed hundreds of thousands of them to go missing. It is scandalous, and compounded by a media that largely refuses to bring attention to it.

The Biden Administration has lost track of more than 320,000 migrant children, according to a recent Inspector General report from the Department of Homeland Security. Hundreds of thousands of children who have shown up to the border without their parents’ have been released into the country by this administration, which now has no idea where they are. Many of these children were likely trafficked into the U.S. by cartels, and all of them are vulnerable to abuses, including sex trafficking and labor exploitation. This is a blight on the moral integrity of the U.S., and demonstrates how anti-border policies harm the most vulnerable among us.

The main justification for the Biden Administration’s anti-border policies has been the stated need to treat foreign nationals who make the perilous journey to the U.S. with compassion. This administration has accused their predecessors of heartlessness and callousness for detaining those who enter the country illegally, especially children. However, it is hard to imagine anything less compassionate than creating an environment where cartels and other bad actors are emboldened to exploit and traffic children through Latin America. In fact, this administration’s anti-border policies encourage parents to send their children to the U.S. illegally.

Shortly after Joe Biden took office, he exempted unaccompanied children from enforcement action when it came to the use of Title 42 at the border. When the administration issued an executive order earlier this year to supposedly crack down on illegal immigration, unaccompanied children were once again exempted from enforcement. This might sound good on paper, but in practice, it serves to reward human trafficking.

The message these policies send to adults living south of the border is clear: You won’t be allowed in after a certain threshold is reached, but your children always will. Many parents will receive this message and pay cartels to take their children to the U.S. While in the custody of the human traffickers, some of these children will be abused, exploited, and even raped. After they arrive in the U.S., some will be released to shady and unvetted sponsors, and the abuse and exploitation will continue. This is a rotten system, and one this administration’s policies are directly responsible for enabling.

This administration prefers the veneer of compassion over policies that actually keep children safe. Their policies are designed to avoid bad optics—such as viral images of children being detained in overcrowded detention facilities—instead of avoiding bad outcomes for children who are sent to the U.S. illegally. Policies that reward foreign nationals for sending their kids across the U.S. border only lead to more human trafficking, abuse, and misery. This principle was once widely accepted and was once articulated by Hillary Clinton, of all people.  

“We have to send a clear message, just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay,” Clinton said in 2014. “So, we don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.”

This is exactly correct, and if this principle had been applied to current U.S. policy, there would not be hundreds of thousands of children currently missing. For some reason, anti-borders activists and politicians believe that the basic principles of criminal law do not apply to immigration law. For example, nobody would support minors being exempt from laws against theft or murder, understanding the obvious perverse incentives that would create. At the same time, it is a core tenet of the anti-borders movement that all immigration laws should include specific carveouts for minors.

A truly humane immigration policy would apply the law across the board. When unaccompanied minors show up at the U.S. border illegally, they should be held, fed, and taken care of, until they can be safely transported back to their home countries. Instead, the federal government has adopted a policy which plays right into the hands of the cartels and other human traffickers by making clear that children who illegally enter the country will be allowed to stay, and ultimately released to sponsors who are not accounted for.

These hundreds of thousands of missing children mark the latest sad chapter in the total collapse of the rule of law at our border. This tragedy was brought on by an administration which prioritizes virtue signaling over real public safety. It is a national disgrace.

Dale L. Wilcox is executive director and general counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.

Also published at The Washington Times, September 24, 2024.