logo
Trump admin hunts down 13K migrant kids after Biden admin lost track of 320K: ‘Children are being saved'

Trump admin hunts down 13K migrant kids after Biden admin lost track of 320K: ‘Children are being saved'

New York Post4 days ago
The Trump administration has located and rescued more than 13,000 migrant children who crossed the border without parents — after more than 320,000 kids were lost under the Biden administration, The Post has learned.
The tough-on-immigration admin has also collared hundreds of migrant sponsors who are accused of committing disturbing crimes or abusing the children in their care.
In one frightening case, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Newark arrested a sponsor who was found to be a Guatemalan fugitive wanted for two counts of attempted aggravated homicide in his home country.
Advertisement
Adelso Garcia Martinez, 29, was busted on May 13.
'It is deplorable to imagine that a wanted fugitive would find illegal shelter in the United States with a child in tow and later go on to sponsor another alien,' ICE HSI Newark Special Agent in Charge Ricky Patel said after the arrest.
3 ICE agents in Newark arrested a Guatemalan unaccompanied alien child sponsor wanted overseas for attempted aggravated homicide.
ICE
A shocking report released in August found that the Biden-Harris administration lost track of more than 320,000 migrant children who crossed the US-Mexico border alone.
Advertisement
The unaccompanied migrants were released into the US without future immigration court dates — meaning there is no way to track their whereabouts — or they failed to show up to court.
Thousands of the kids were also released to sponsors who were poorly vetted, meaning the vulnerable minors were put at risk of sex trafficking, forced labor, and other forms of exploitation, the Homeland Security Inspector General's report said.
In February, President Trump's Department of Health and Human Services announced it was launching an investigation into the troubling number of cases of unaccompanied migrant children who may have ended up in the hands of sexual predators and human traffickers because of lax vetting policies.
Advertisement
'Children are being saved,' a Trump administration official told The Post of the effort to locate the kids lost under the previous administration.
3 Migrant group, including women and children, crossing the US border.
Toby Canham for NY Post
In another sickening case, a 15-year-old girl was rescued in New York after an Ecuadorian man impregnated her and then had his mother sponsor her so they could live together, the Department of Homeland Security told The Post.
The sicko, who was not named, had been in a relationship with the child since she was 13 years old and had impregnated her before she crossed the southern border unaccompanied, the agency said.
Advertisement
His mom sponsored the teen in Harlem, where the trio lived together. Homeland Security agents in New York arrested the child predator on May 28.
An HHS source told NewsNation that under the Trump admin, ICE had arrested 422 sponsors who are accused of abusing the minors in their care, or of other crimes.
3 Migrants sleeping in an El Paso shelter.
James Breeden/Shutterstock for NY Post
'By leaving our borders open and even encouraging people to come here illegally, Biden enabled the largest human-trafficking operation in modern history,' Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement to The Post on Friday.
'We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to eradicate human trafficking operations targeting the United States. Under the leadership of President Donald Trump, and working together at every level of government, we can win this fight. And we will,' she added.
Child migrants who cross the border illegally without parents are apprehended by border agents and handed off to HHS, which helps them locate their US sponsors.
Sponsors of migrant minors don't have to be family members.
The rescued migrant children are either reunited with their families in their home countries or are placed into HHS foster care, sources told The Post.
Advertisement
President Trump's 'border czar' Tom Homan also recently detailed some of the upsetting cases involving kids on Miranda Devine's 'Pod Force One' podcast.
'We rescued victims of sex trafficking [and] two weeks ago, we rescued a 14-year-old that was already pregnant, living with adult men,' he said.
'We rescued some victims of forced labor. We found children working on ranches and chicken farms, not going to school, but enslaved labor in the United States of America,' he continued.
'Some of the children we found [were] perfectly fine with their families … They just didn't respond to call-ins [because they] didn't want to face the consequences of immigration court.'
Advertisement
Even after receiving briefings on the horrific cases involving migrant minors, the Biden admin allegedly took 'no meaningful steps' to address the issue, according to the Homeland Security Inspector General's report.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

‘ICE Barbie' Kristie Noem dons favorite cowboy gear as she visits Argentina to work on new visa deal
‘ICE Barbie' Kristie Noem dons favorite cowboy gear as she visits Argentina to work on new visa deal

Yahoo

time3 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

‘ICE Barbie' Kristie Noem dons favorite cowboy gear as she visits Argentina to work on new visa deal

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem took the opportunity to play dress-up again as she visited Argentina to sign a new visa-free travel agreement. Speaking to reporters alongside Argentinian officials at the Campo De Mayo military base, Noem sat astride a horse clad in a cowboy hat and belt, plus blue jeans and a black western-style jacket. She promised to "expedite" the easing of visa rules for citizens of the South American country, whose budget-slashing libertarian President Javier Milei is a major ally of President Donald Trump. It is the latest in a long series of sartorial stunts for the former South Dakota governor, who at various times has dressed as a plumber, a welder, a builder, a highway cop, a Border Patrol agent, a firefighter, a coast guard officer, and an ICE agent in tactical gear. The Old West appears to be a favorite touchstone, with Noem once asking her Instagram followers to vote on the best painting of her as a cowgirl even while Texas struggled with devastating floods. In March, she posed in heavy make-up in front of caged prisoners at El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison, where Venezuelan immigrants sent there by the Trump administration say they were tortured, beaten, and raped. The photo ops, and her status as the face of the Trump administration's immigration policy, have led some critics to mockingly dub Noem "ICE Barbie" or "Homeland Barbie" — with even city officials in flood-hit Texas reportedly adopting the term. "Under President Javier Milei's leadership, Argentina is becoming an even stronger friend to the United States — more committed than ever to border security for both of our nations," Noem said in a statement on Monday. "Argentina now has the lowest visa overstay rate in all of Latin America, and 25 percent more Argentines traveled to the U.S. in the first four months of this year compared to last year. "That is why we are now taking steps to allow Argentina back into the Visa Waiver Program,' she said. Monday's agreement is simply a statement of intent and actually realizing visa-free travel to the U.S. or Argentinian nationals could take years yet. A post on Noem's Instagram and X feeds for National Cowboy Day on Saturday, showing her riding with horse-mounted border agents, attracted many supportive, even fawning responses. Other commenters were less impressed. "Wasting taxpayers money again on a photo op?" said one Instagram user. "Any excuse to put on a costume. What a joke," posted another. One user on X inquired about her wardrobe budget, while another branded her "all hat and no cattle". Visa waivers allow citizens of friendly jurisdictions such as the U.K. and the European Union to visit the U.S. for leisure purposes for up to 90 days, without needing to apply for a visa first. Argentina joined the program in 1996, but was removed in 2002 due to fears that an ongoing economic crisis would drive more Argentinians to try to work in the U.S. illegally. The country has its own storied tradition of cowboys, known as gauchos, though they traditionally dress rather differently to their American counterparts, in patterned wool ponchos and voluminous trousers.

Trump gave the USOPC cover on its transgender athlete policy change. It could end up in court anyway
Trump gave the USOPC cover on its transgender athlete policy change. It could end up in court anyway

Yahoo

time3 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Trump gave the USOPC cover on its transgender athlete policy change. It could end up in court anyway

In its push to remove transgender athletes from Olympic sports, the Trump administration provided the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee a detailed legal brief on how such a move would not conflict with the Ted Stevens Act, the landmark 1978 federal statute governing the Olympic movement. That gave the USOPC the cover it needed to quietly change its policy, though the protection offers no guarantee the new policy won't be challenged in court. Olympic legal expert Jill Pilgrim called the Trump guidance 'a well thought-out, well-reasoned set of arguments for people who want to look at it from that perspective.' 'But I'd be pretty shocked if this doesn't get challenged if there is, somewhere along the line, a trans athlete who's in contention for an Olympic team or world championship and gets excluded,' said Pilgrim, who has experience litigating eligibility rules for the Olympics and is a former general counsel for USA Track and Field. The USOPC's update of its athlete safety policy orders its 54 national governing bodies to rewrite their participation rules to ensure they are in sync with the executive order Trump signed in February called 'Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports." When the USOPC released the guidance, fewer than five had rules that would adhere to the new policy. Among the first adopters was USA Fencing, which was pulled into a congressional hearing earlier this year about transgender women in sports when a woman refused to compete against a transgender opponent at a meet in Maryland. One of the main concerns over the USOPC's change is that rewriting the rules could conflict with a clause in the Ted Stevens Act stating that an NGB cannot have eligibility criteria 'that are more restrictive than those of the appropriate international sports federation' that oversees its sport. While some American federations such as USATF and USA Swimming follow rules set by their international counterparts, many others don't. International federations have wrestled with eligibility criteria surrounding transgender sports, and not all have guidelines as strict as what Trump's order calls for. World Rowing, for example, has guidelines that call for specific medical conditions to be met for transgender athletes competing in the female category. Other federations, such as the one for skiing, are more vague. White House lawyers provided the USOPC a seven-paragraph analysis that concluded that requiring 'men's participation in women's sports cannot be squared with the rest of the" Ted Stevens Act. 'And in any event, permitting male athletes to compete against only other fellow males is not a 'restriction' on participation or eligibility, it is instead, a neutral channeling rule," according to the analysis, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. Once the sports federations come into compliance, the question then becomes whether the new policy will be challenged, either by individual athletes or by states whose laws don't conform with what the NGBs adopt. The guidance impacts everyone from Olympic-level athletes to grassroots players whose clubs are affiliated with the NGBs. Shannon Minter, the legal director at the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, said it will not be hard to find a transgender athlete who is being harmed by the USOPC change, and that the White House guidance 'will be challenged and is highly unlikely to succeed.' 'There are transgender women. There are some international sporting organizations that have policies that permit transgender women to compete if they meet certain medical conditions,' Minter said. 'Under the Ted Stevens Act, they can't override that. So, their response is just to, by brute force, pretend there's no such thing as a transgender woman. They can't just dictate that by sheer force of will.' Traditionally, athletes on the Olympic pathway who have issues with eligibility rules must first try to resolve those through what's called a Section IX arbitration case before heading to the U.S. court system. Pilgrim spelled out one scenario in which an athlete wins an arbitration 'and then the USOPC has a problem.' 'Then, it's in the USOPC's court to deny that person the opportunity to compete, and then they'll be in court, no doubt about that,' she said. All this comes against the backdrop of a 2020 law that passed that, in the wake of sex scandals in Olympic sports, gave Congress the power to dissolve the USOPC board. That, combined with the upcoming Summer Games in Los Angeles and the president's consistent effort to place his stamp on issues surrounding sports, is widely viewed as driving the USOPC's traditionally cautious board toward making a decision that was being roundly criticized in some circles. The committee's new policy replaces one that called for reliance on 'real data and science-based evidence rather than ideology" to make decisions about transgender athletes in sports. 'As a federally chartered organization, we have an obligation to comply with federal expectations,' CEO Sarah Hirshland and board chair Gene Sykes wrote to Olympic stakeholders last week. 'The guidance we've received aligns with the Ted Stevens Act, reinforcing our mandated responsibility to promote athlete safety and competitive fairness.' The USOPC didn't set a timeline on NGBs coming into compliance, though it's believed most will get there by the end of the year. ___ AP sports:

Trump says he could pardon Ghislaine Maxwell. But do Americans think he should?
Trump says he could pardon Ghislaine Maxwell. But do Americans think he should?

Miami Herald

time5 minutes ago

  • Miami Herald

Trump says he could pardon Ghislaine Maxwell. But do Americans think he should?

The vast majority of Americans oppose granting clemency to Ghislaine Maxwell — something President Donald Trump has not ruled out, according to new polling. In the latest YouGov/Economist survey, 64% of respondents said they do not think the president should pardon Maxwell, a convicted sex trafficker and longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein. (page 57) Just 4% said they believe Trump should pardon her, and about one-third, 32%, said they were not sure. On this question, there was a broad consensus across the political spectrum, with 75% of Democrats, 60% of independents and 59% of Republicans opposing a pardon. The survey, which sampled 1,777 U.S. adults July 25 to 28, has a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points. It comes after Trump — dogged by controversy over his administration's handling of an investigation into Epstein — has left open the possibility of extending clemency to Maxwell, who is cooperating with federal investigators. The poll also follows a report from The Wall Street Journal about 'bawdy letters' sent to Epstein for his 50th birthday, including one from Trump, who has strongly denied writing the letter. It reportedly included a hand-drawn naked woman with the text 'may every day be another wonderful secret' and 'enigmas never age.' Trump has filed a $10 billion lawsuit over the report. 'I'm allowed to do it, but it's something I have not thought about,' he told reporters on July 25. Three days later, when asked about a possible pardon, Trump said, 'I'm allowed to give her a pardon but nobody's approached me with it. It's in the news…but right now it would be inappropriate to talk about it.' Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in Florida after being convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking a minor, conspiring to entice minors to travel for illegal sexual activities, and related charges. New York prosecutors alleged that, between 1994 and 2004, she helped Epstein 'recruit, groom, and ultimately abuse' underage victims. She is appealing her conviction. Department of Justice officials have recently granted Maxwell — the daughter of British media mogul Robert Maxwell — a form of 'limited immunity' to answer questions about Epstein, according to NBC News, citing an unnamed official. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche interviewed her in Florida on July 23 and 24, after which he vowed to 'share additional information about what we learned at the appropriate time.' 'She was asked maybe about 100 different people,' David Oscar Markus, Maxwell's attorney, told reporters, according to NBC News. 'She answered questions about everybody, and she didn't hold anything back. They asked about every single, every possible thing you could imagine, everything.'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store