Federal Report Highlights Oversight Failures in Caregiver Background Checks for Unaccompanied Migrant Children

<p>A report from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General indicates that the Biden administration did not adequately check the criminal histories of caregivers for unaccompanied migrant children who entered the United States alone. The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) conducted only 176 of the 256 required visits to unlicensed facilities in Texas and Florida between September 2021 and August 2024.</p><p>The report states that due to these oversight failures, new staff may have had access to children before their criminal histories were verified. It suggests that the health and safety of these children could have been compromised.</p><p>The administration utilized unlicensed facilities to manage the influx of approximately half a million migrant children. When Border Patrol agents encounter unaccompanied children, they transfer them to ORR, which places them in various care settings, including shelters and foster care.</p><p>ORR is mandated to check on these facilities within the first three months of receiving migrant children and quarterly thereafter. The report found that some facilities did not conduct or document necessary FBI fingerprint-based background checks, and some checks expired. In March 2023, ORR inspected a major care provider's facilities for the first time since it was delicensed in August 2021, discovering that it failed to conduct FBI background checks for over 3,000 employees.</p><p>Delays in monitoring visits were attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic and a lack of resources, including staffing challenges. The Biden administration has faced scrutiny regarding its vetting process for sponsors of unaccompanied children, with a previous report indicating that around 320,000 children were lost track of, raising concerns about their safety.</p>