The number of immigrant children trafficked across the borders of the U.S. skyrocketed between 2021 and 2024, but federal law enforcement officials have seen those numbers plummet almost to nothing over the past seven months. According to data released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), President Donald Trump’s administration has overseen a sharp decline in the number of unaccompanied alien children (UACs) encountered by federal law enforcement officials, falling from 6,862 encounters in December to only 515 encounters in July: a 92.5% decrease. Since Trump returned to office at the end of January, CBP and other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) divisions have encountered a total of just over 4,733 UACs, compared to the annual average under the Biden administration of over 127,500, a 96% decrease.

Under the Biden administration, the number of unaccompanied minors subjected to sex-trafficking more than tripled, rising from an annual average of 625 sex-trafficked children to 1,143 in then-president Joe Biden’s first year in the White House. The numbers continued rising from there. According to border czar and former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) chief Tom Homan, over 300,000 UACs went missing under the Biden administration, with many suspected of having been sex trafficked. “We’re gonna find some of them living with pedophiles, living in sex slavery, some are gonna be dead, but we gotta find these children,” Homan said shortly before Trump returned to office.

One of the reasons cross-border child-trafficking has decreased so steeply is the presence of ICE agents at meetings between UACs and adult sponsors. Reportedly, ICE agents have begun attending the meetings during which migrant children are to be released from DHS custody to the care of their U.S.-based “parents” or sponsors, who are often illegal immigrants themselves. The new policy directive was issued by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) responsible for the care of those minors. The new policy requires sponsors seeking custody of immigrant children to attend in-person meetings, rather than submit identification documents online, for more stringent vetting. Other measures taken by the Trump administration to protect immigrant children include mandatory fingerprinting of adult sponsors and all adult members of their households and allowing immigration officials to conduct home inspections and home visits.

Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, said in comments to The Washington Stand, “We have plenty of evidence of smugglers and traffickers posing as children’s parents.” She recounted, “As the Biden administration allowed 550,000 unaccompanied children to enter the U.S., it inexplicably stopped DNA testing suspected smugglers claiming to be children’s parents. Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) lost track of over 300,000 minors.” Ries continued, “In stark contrast, the Trump administration is working to locate the missing children and end any on-going smuggling or trafficking. So, it makes perfect sense that ICE would interview adults claiming to be UACs’ parents.”

“To permanently prevent unaccompanied child border crossings going forward, Congress should repeal the 2008 immigration benefits it created especially for UACs,” Ries said. She continued, “Such benefits have only acted as a predictable pull factor and have driven up the number of unaccompanied border crossings.” She added, “Additionally, Congress should return responsibility for shelter and locating sponsors of UACs back to DHS. It is not part of HHS’s mission and HHS is clearly not good at doing the job.”

Andrew Arthur, resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, explained in a recent article that a particular provision of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) of 2008 essentially created a loophole facilitating the trafficking of immigrant children. Section 235 of the TVPRA categorized unaccompanied minors as either coming from a “contiguous country” such as Canada or Mexico, allowing federal authorities to quickly deport the child if there was no credible fear of return, and those from “non-contiguous countries,” meaning everywhere else in the world. UACs from non-contiguous countries were required to be placed in the care of ORR and, if possible, eventually transferred to a sponsor in the U.S. “Not surprisingly, the number of non-contiguous UACs soared after Congress passed section 235 of the TVPRA, as parents (and more importantly smugglers) realized it essentially guaranteed that any child who could make it illegally across the line would be released into this country,” Arthur wrote. “ORR struggled to handle that UAC surge, to put it politely,” he added.

“You’d think that after all these hearings Congress would review … section 235 of the TVPRA, and either rescind [it] or at least fix the most glaring issues with the current UAC process,” Arthur quipped. He continued, “Congress premised that process on three naïve (and erroneous) propositions: (1) all UACs are better off with sponsors than in government custody; (2) most adult sponsors can be entrusted with a kid; and (3) it’s in the ‘best interests’ of alien children to come illegally with smugglers rather than to remain back home.” Arthur observed, “ORR has few defenders, but respectfully, in its haste to move UACs out of immigration custody, Congress failed to provide the office with any guidance on how to screen and when to deny would-be sponsors.” He continued, “As a result, it’s beyond cavil that children are raped, trafficked, exploited, and abused thanks to the [Homeland Security Act of 2002] and TVPRA, and whenever the volume of UACs at the border rises, those hells compound exponentially.”

Arthur pointed out that, under federal law, the smuggling of non-citizens into the U.S. qualifies as a class D felony, with a penalty of up to a decade in prison. “There’s no exception for adults who conspire to smuggle kids here, and if DHS throws a few would-be sponsors cum conspirators in jail for a decade, you’ll see the child-smuggling industry dry up quickly. But to find them, Congress must create a role for DHS in the sponsor-screening process from the outset,” Arthur wrote. He added, “Ideally, alien children encountered at the border would be handed over to USCIS officers to determine whether they have viable asylum or trafficking claims, and only if they do should they be placed with a sponsor here. If UACs don’t have an asylum or trafficking claim, however, they should be transferred to their own governments for placement abroad.”