As soon as President Trump was sworn into office for the second time, combating child sex trafficking was made Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s top priority. By early 2025, a federal task force was launched with a uniform goal of locating hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children, lost under the Biden administration.
Reliant upon 287(g) partnership agreements with local law enforcement and state agencies, many of those children have been found in some of the worst conditions imaginable.
By July of 2025, ICE announced that the UAC Safety Verification Initiative had located 13,000 out of an estimated 300,000 missing children, transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement during the surge in border crossings.
Following a vicious attack by anti-ICE radicals – one of them hitting her in the face with a dildo – TPUSA journalist Savanah Hernandez interviewed Border Czar Tom Homan this month. Noting that Trump’s first directive was to “find the kids,” Homan announced that over 129,000 children have now been located.
Tom Homan: "Half a million children were smuggled into this country under Joe Biden; they lost track of 300,000 and couldn’t find them. As of this week, we have located over 129,000 of these kids." pic.twitter.com/2u2kKtINhM
— Joe Rogan Podcast News (@joeroganhq) May 9, 2026
Emphasizing that the agency will not rest until all 300,000 children are located, Homan said the Biden administration turned children over to the cartels. Noting that some have not made it, Homan detailed rescues from the “worst conditions imaginable,” including sex trafficking, and labor trafficking as children were placed with unvetted sponsors.
While many of the sponsor addresses went to parking lots, mail-forwarding addresses, or motels, Homan said the agency has relied on the digital footprint of sponsors to help locate the missing children.
Though seemingly unthinkable, the Biden administration implemented rule changes that deregulated the vetting of sponsors and homes that unaccompanied children were placed in.
According to a February 2024 HHS Office of Inspector General report, these rule changes led to 11,000 children being given to individuals who were never even asked for a background check. Of a significant portion of the cases sampled, follow-up safety calls were untimely or undocumented, raising safety concerns for children released to sponsors.
Moreover, Homan explains that without a digital record or footprint, finding the children has required extensive agency resources to track down the sponsors.
Unfortunately, agents at the C3 lab say this often involves pouring over graphic material in hopes of finding clues about a child’s location.
📺MUST-WATCH: Deep dive into ICE HSI’s Cyber Crime Center pic.twitter.com/tHavaC737L
— U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (@ICEgov) May 11, 2026
ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations Cyber Crimes Center – C3 – provides forensic and technical support in these cases. C3’s Child Exploitation Investigations Unit analyzes digital evidence, devices and online material to identify victims and support prosecutions when welfare checks reveal sex abuse or trafficking indicators.
ICE welfare checks have uncovered a complicated web of child sexual exploitation—often involving U.S. Citizens.
Anamarie Fleischman, a U.S. citizen from Roanoke, Ind., started her 50-year prison sentence April 15, for making and distributing child sex abuse material.
🔎Fleischman’s conviction was made possible because of an ICE @HSI_HQ -led probe, in cooperation with the Indiana State… pic.twitter.com/VQTz7sNLvG
— U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (@ICEgov) May 11, 2026
During a welfare check in one New York case, special agents arrested a sponsor who allegedly smuggled a 13-year-old girl into the country for sexual exploitation and forced labor.
On May 12, 2025, HSI Austin reported the identification and rescue of a child, and the arrest of two Guatemalan nationals for human trafficking and statutory rape. During a welfare check, HSI Agents, with the assistance of the FBI, identified a pregnant 14-year-old female residing with an unrelated adult male sponsor, later determined to be the biological father of the unborn child.
Other operations found sponsors possessing and distributing child sexual abuse material, pregnant girls living with sponsors, and children subjected to neglect, abuse, and forced into sex work to repay smuggling debts.
The task force initiative relies upon 287(g) partnerships, which deputize state and local officers for immigration functions. These agreements, which enable local cooperation and community outreach, have been targeted by activists and made illegal in sanctuary jurisdictions. In states like New Jersey, portals have even been created on government websites to track federal officers—alerting criminals of their movements.
In one of the most bizarre twists across Democrat-run sanctuary states, anti-ICE protesters have battered federal officers with sex toys as they attempt to rescue children and bring child sex abusers to justice.
