Judicial Watch Sues Homeland Security for Records about Efforts to Locate and Track Unaccompanied Alien Children
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for records about efforts to locate unaccompanied alien children lost during the Biden Administration (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:25-cv-02558)).
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) failed to respond to April 26, 2025, FOIA requests for a document titled “Unaccompanied Alien Children Joint Initiative Field Implementation,” associated communications and other records concerning unaccompanied minors coming across our borders.
The document titled “Unaccompanied Alien Children [UAC] Joint Initiative Field Implementation” is an internal ICE memo written in late January 2025 under the Trump Administration:
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) will commence an operational initiative to locate unaccompanied alien children (UAC) who were encountered by DHS and released from the care and custody of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement (HHS-ORR). DHS has not had contact with the identified UAC since their release from HHS-ORR’s care.
The purpose of this initiative is for HSI to support ERO in locating UAC, making sure UAC’s immigration obligations are met, and conducting investigative activities to ensure UAC are not subjected to crimes of human trafficking or other exploitation.
As Judicial Watch’s Corruption Chronicles blog reported:
The government’s UAC program has for years been rocked by many other problems that have put young migrants at risk, including physical and sexual abuse at U.S.-funded shelters… A [2020] federal audit blasted the agency for failing to protect UAC from sexual misconduct at the facilities. During a six-month period alone, investigators from the HHS Inspector General’s office uncovered more than 750 incidents involving sexual misconduct at dozens of shelters housing minor detainees.
In July 2025 Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and reported “failures to properly track, process, and safeguard nearly 448,000 unaccompanied alien children who entered the United States illegally over the last four years.” His testimony references a March 2025 report titled “ICE Cannot Effectively Monitor the Location and Status of All Unaccompanied Alien Children After Custody.”
“The Biden administration failed to safeguard hundreds of thousands of illegal alien children it helped traffic into the United States,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Our lawsuit hopefully will get details on this mass human trafficking of alien children under the Biden administration.”
In December 2022, Judicial Watch received records from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) detailing the nighttime transportation of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) by air from Texas to Tennessee, as well as two other flights making multiple stops across the country.
In September 2021, Judicial Watch received records from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) which listed 33 separate incidences of alleged sexual abuse in a one-month time period.
In July 2018, after a three-year delay, Judicial Watch obtained records containing nearly 1,000 summaries of Significant Incident Reports (SIRs) from Health and Human Services revealing that “unaccompanied alien children” processed during the Obama administration included admitted murderers, rapists, drug smugglers, prostitutes, and human traffickers.
In 2014, Judicial Watch uncovered records from the Department of Health and Human Services revealing that the Obama administration paid Baptist Children and Family Services (BCFS) $182,129,786 to provide “basic shelter care” to 2,400 “unaccompanied alien children” (UAC) for four months in 2014. The BCFS budget included charges for $104,215,608 for UACs at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and an additional $77,914,178 for UACs at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.
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