Michael Cloud demands answers from ICE over nearly 300,000 missing migrant children

Washington Examiner

Brady Knox | October 2, 2024

EXCLUSIVE — Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) is demanding a response from Immigration and Customs Enforcement regarding a report that found nearly 300,000 migrant children disappeared from tracking.

A recent report from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General found that over 300,000 migrant children under the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement effectively disappeared from official radar. In a letter to ICE acting Director Patrick Lechleitner, Cloud expressed worries that the “failure” in oversight left the children vulnerable to sex trafficking and forced labor.

“The Biden-Harris administration’s failure to track thousands of vulnerable migrant children is unacceptable,” he told the Washington Examiner. “Almost 300,000 children have essentially vanished under their watch, putting them at serious risk of trafficking and exploitation. This administration is sitting by and not doing nearly enough to get answers and fix this crisis.”

Over 291,000 children weren’t issued proper notices to appear, while 32,000 more missed their court dates, with ICE unaware of their whereabouts, according to the report.

In his letter, Cloud requested information as to what steps were being taken to mitigate the problem.

In August, a whistleblower blamed the Biden administration for the problems with the system. Tara Rodas, a federal employee with the Department of Health and Human Services, told the New York Post that she would hand children over to sponsors who didn’t have to be family members, possibly opening up the possibility of abuse by criminals.

She said she handed children over to “traffickers, members of transnational criminal organizations, bad actors, bad, bad, bad people.”

Rodas also said the Biden administration was responsible for stripping away the vetting process.

“At the very beginning of the Biden administration, they stripped all the vetting out of the process,” she said.

Read the full letter from Congressman Cloud to the Acting Director of ICE: