Human Trafficking Expert Explains Why Biden’s Hotline For Migrant Kids Missed Astonishing Number Of Calls

President and founder of GUARD Against Trafficking Ali Hopper said Thursday on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” that the Biden administration had reportedly missed over 60,000 calls to a hotline for migrant children due to being understaffed.

While testifying before the House Committee on Homeland Security on July 16, Hopper said to lawmakers that the Biden administration allegedly missed 65,000 calls from migrant children to a hotline set up to “report concerns about the unaccompanied child’s safety.” Discussing her testimony with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, the host asked Hopper what happened with the calls. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: The Border Is Quiet, But Sex Traffickers Are Thriving — And One Group Is Fighting To Stop Them)

“Yes, it was a safeguard put in place by the previous administration, and it looked good on policy. It looked good on paper. 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,” Hopper said. “That is what results with 65,000 unanswered calls.”

WATCH:

“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. 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,” Hopper added. “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 testimony to lawmakers, Hopper said the Trump administration learned the concerned hotline calls took place between August 2023 to January 2025, with complaints spanning “about stale bread all the way to being abused.”

Concerns about migrant children under the leadership of former President Joe Biden ramped up in the summer of 2024 after whistleblowers like Tara Rodas testified against Biden’s Health and Human Services (HHS), calling attention to the Office of Refugee Resettlement and the vetting of sponsors for migrant children.

In September 2024, Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General released its August report that said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could not “monitor all unaccompanied migrant children” released from the custody of the Department of Homeland Security and HHS, as the U.S. struggled with its border crisis.

Whistleblowers and experts continued to vocalize their concerns about migrant children in the U.S. An estimated 300,000 went missing, with many whistleblowers and experts saying the minors were possibly victims of forced labor, sex trafficking, or even killed. During a Fox interview on July 11, Border Patrol Chief for California’s El Centro sector Gregory Bovino said that an ICE raid of a marijuana farm in Southern California rescued 10 juvenile illegal migrants, eight of whom were unaccompanied and believed to be a part of the estimated 300,000 missing.

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