An independent government watchdog found serious lapses at the Department of Health and Human Services in its protection of children who migrate to the United States on their own, according to a report released Thursday.
H.H.S., the federal agency responsible for sheltering migrant children when they arrive by themselves, repeatedly handed them over to adult sponsors in the United States without thorough vetting and sometimes failed to conduct timely safety checks on children once they were released, said the report by the department’s inspector general.
“I would define these gaps as very serious,” said Haley Lubeck, the project leader for the review. “We know that these children are especially vulnerable to exploitation.”
The findings echoed New York Times reporting that the screening of sponsors and other safeguards for migrant children broke down during the first years of the Biden administration as hundreds of thousands of children crossed the border amid a pandemic-era economic collapse in parts of Central America. Migrant children have ended up working dangerous industrial jobs in violation of child labor laws across the country — in slaughterhouses, factories, construction sites and elsewhere, The Times found. Some have been gravely injured or killed.
The report follows a June audit that H.H.S. conducted in response to Times reporting that found that many children were living with strangers who expected or even forced them to work. That audit revealed that government case workers had released more than 340 migrant children to adults who were sponsoring three or more children who were not family members.
In early 2021, record numbers of children started crossing the border faster than H.H.S. could process them. With no room left in shelters, many children stayed on cots in crowded tents, sparking public outrage. The Biden administration pressured staff members to move the children out of shelters more quickly, and government workers said they saw children being sent to adults who clearly intended to put them to work.
H.H.S. is supposed to call all children a month after they begin living with adult sponsors. But data obtained by The Times showed that over two years, the agency could not reach more than 85,000 children. In Thursday’s report, the inspector general found that in more than a fifth of cases, H.H.S. workers did not make these calls in a timely way, and in some instances, waited nearly a year.
In other cases, the review found, government workers skipped important safety checks, including looking into whether adults had abused children in the past, or ensuring that the addresses to which children were released were actual residences. In a third of cases, sponsors submitted illegible identification. In other cases, the agency sent children to sponsors without making mandatory home visits.
The report also found that some protective measures, including periodic reviews by case coordinators, were removed when shelters were overcrowded.
One child who said he had not received the mandatory follow-up call is Wander Nimajuan. He was 13 when he was released in 2022 to a man whom H.H.S. caseworkers listed as an unrelated adult. His mother had arranged for him to travel to the United States because the family was struggling in Guatemala. He said he had expected to continue studying in middle school. Instead, his sponsor put him to work immediately.
Wander has spent the past two years working in roofing, the most dangerous job in the country for young people outside of agriculture. “I would have liked to talk to someone,” he said.
An H.H.S. spokesman, Jeff Nesbit, said the new report raised issues the agency had “already improved,” including through better policies and a joint task force with the Department of Labor. “These changes simultaneously prioritize child welfare and safety while minimizing the time children spend in congregate care settings,” he said.
In the past year, H.H.S. has created a team that focuses on identifying cases of exploitation of migrant children, committed to providing universal case management for children after they are released, and begun offering more children free legal services.
The inspector general for the Labor Department is also looking into how officials there have handled the recent surge in child labor.
