Ali Hopper, president and founder of GUARD Against Trafficking, testified before Congress on July 16 that the Biden-Harris administration failed to answer approximately 65,000 calls from migrant children to a government-run hotline intended to report safety concerns.
Hopper shared the findings with lawmakers during a hearing before the House Committee on Homeland Security and later discussed the issue on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” on Thursday.
The calls, Hopper said, were made between August 2023 and January 2025 to a hotline originally established during the Trump administration to allow unaccompanied minors to report abuse or neglect.
“65,000 calls [to HHS] went unanswered…One case where a child’s call was reporting that grown men were coming into his room at night… That call went unanswered.”@ali_hopper details the Biden administration’s devastating failure to protect unaccompanied alien children: pic.twitter.com/G8GS8JdDYi
— House Homeland GOP (@HomelandGOP) July 16, 2025
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However, she alleged that the Biden-Harris administration failed to properly staff the system, leaving tens of thousands of calls unanswered.
“Yes, it was a safeguard put in place by the previous administration, and it looked good on policy. It looked good on paper,” Hopper told host Laura Ingraham.
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“But when the policy doesn’t actually work, when what was implemented as a safeguard doesn’t work and you only have one person assigned to the hotline to manage and field all of these calls, that is what happens. That is what results with 65,000 unanswered calls.”
Hopper recounted one specific incident involving a child who reportedly called to report that adult men were entering his room at night and touching him.
That call, according to Hopper, went unanswered until it was reviewed by officials under the Biden-Harris administration.
“One of the stories was that a child had called into the hotline reporting that men were coming into his room at night and they were touching him,” Hopper said.
“That call went unanswered until this administration took office and acted very swiftly, conducted a home study, a welfare check, rescued the child and the sponsor’s been arrested. But there are numerous cases like this and, honestly, this would have never been uncovered until this administration took over and reviewed all of that.”
During her congressional testimony, Hopper said the missed calls included complaints that ranged “about stale bread all the way to being abused.”
The concerns emerged during a period of increased scrutiny on the handling of unaccompanied migrant children, particularly under the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which operates under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
In the summer of 2024, whistleblowers including Tara Rodas publicly criticized the Biden-Harris administration’s oversight of child migrants.
Rodas specifically raised concerns about how HHS was vetting adult sponsors for unaccompanied minors.
HHS Whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas says she raised concerns about sending so many illegal migrant children “to the same address”
“I was told, Tara, we only get sued if we keep kids in care too long. We don’t get sued by traffickers”
This is the HHS under the Democrat Party pic.twitter.com/8nH11LvpKl
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) May 13, 2025
In August 2024, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General issued a report that said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lacked the ability to “monitor all unaccompanied migrant children” released from federal custody.
The report cited serious gaps in tracking after release from DHS and HHS care.
Whistleblowers and child welfare experts have raised alarms that as many as 300,000 unaccompanied minors are currently unaccounted for in the United States.
Some are believed to have been subjected to forced labor or sex trafficking. Others may have died after release into sponsor custody.
On July 11, Gregory Bovino, Border Patrol Chief of the El Centro Sector in California, told Fox News that an ICE raid on a marijuana farm in Southern California led to the rescue of 10 juvenile illegal aliens.
Eight of the children were unaccompanied minors and are believed to be among the larger group of missing migrant children.