A Biden administration hotline for unaccompanied migrant children had one staffer and let 65,000 calls go unanswered, according to a recent hearing held by the House Committee on Homeland Security.
The Biden administration set up the hotline so that unaccompanied minors could call and report concerns if they had trouble with the sponsors—often unvetted strangers—they were being sent to live with.
While the Trump administration has been hammered by mainstream media outlets for its immigration enforcement efforts, the coverage is sparse on these disturbing revelations regarding the hotline and non-governmental organizations that received billions in taxpayer funds to support unaccompanied minors.
Libs of TikTok shared the revelation on X, with footage from the July 17 hearing:
HOLY SHLIT. The Biden administration set up a hotline for unaccompanied migrant children to report safety issues with sponsors.
65,000 calls went UNANSWERED.
Only ONE person was reportedly assigned to take the calls. pic.twitter.com/QzJ0d0MCjl
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 23, 2025
“HOLY SHLIT. The Biden administration set up a hotline for unaccompanied migrant children to report safety issues with sponsors. 65,000 calls went UNANSWERED. Only ONE person was reportedly assigned to take the calls.”
During the hearing, lawmakers learned the administration failed to respond to 65,000 calls between August 2023 and January 2025. This hotline is operated by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“Our colleagues are very upset that we’re having this hearing today,” said Rep. Eli Crane, R-Arizona, during the hearing. “They don’t want to talk about this stuff. They don’t want to talk about the 300,000 kids that we still don’t know where they are. We’re talking about the NGOs that they used as middlemen to carry out their operations.”
Ali Hopper, founder and president of GUARD Against Trafficking, delivered damning testimony that these unanswered calls ranged from minor complaints to serious allegations of abuse.
Crane questioned Hopper on the backlog:
“So you’re telling this committee that the Biden administration, while they were letting all of these unaccompanied minors into the country—and as we’ve talked about today, they weren’t keeping track of them—they issued these kids a hotline that they could call if they had trouble with the sponsor family they were placed with, and you’re saying that 65,000 calls to this hotline, designated to protect these kids, went unanswered. Is that what you’re telling this committee?” Her response: “Yes, sir.”
Crane responded: “Wow, that is unbelievable, unbelievable.”
Crane also posted the clip on X, writing: “We need to keep exposing what radical Democrats did. It was all a policy choice.”
We need to keep exposing what radical democrats did. It was all a policy choice. https://t.co/A7AmRoYcxO
— Rep. Eli Crane (@RepEliCrane) July 22, 2025
Hopper also pointed to a broader lack of oversight, stating that sponsor vetting standards were extremely low, according to The Post Millennial, a Canada-based news organization and one of few articles to turn up on the hearing.
Hopper said a retired Border Patrol agent once told her, “The requirements to adopt a dog that was about to be euthanized were higher than the standards and the documents that needed to be provided for an adult to sponsor a child.”
The 65,000 unanswered calls refer to a May 2025 report from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, on failures of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under Biden’s open border fiasco.
Another X post by House Homeland GOP highlights the Biden administration’s devastating failure to protect unaccompanied migrant children: “One case where a child’s call was reporting that grown men were coming into his room at night… That call went unanswered.”
“65,000 calls [to HHS] went unanswered…One case where a child's call was reporting that grown men were coming into his room at night… That call went unanswered.”@ali_hopper details the Biden administration's devastating failure to protect unaccompanied alien children: pic.twitter.com/G8GS8JdDYi
— House Homeland GOP (@HomelandGOP) July 16, 2025
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Alabama, appeared on FOX Business’ The Evening Edit to discuss the findings.
“This is one of many examples that the Biden administration dropped the ball on this,” Tuberville told host Elizabeth MacDonald. “I don’t know whether they did it on purpose or they just didn’t care.”
Tuberville said when he first got to Washington, Republican lawmakers would go to the border every couple of months. He witnessed unaccompanied children “in cages”—boys and girls in the same cages—and said that they would “shuffle them out, put them on buses and send them to cities all over the country.”
The Biden administration has reportedly lost track of 300,000 illegal migrant children who entered the U.S. without an adult. They joined millions of illegal immigrants who flooded the southern border under Biden’s term.
The July 17 hearing focused on the role of non-governmental organizations in responding to the border crisis and processing illegals at the border.
Hopper testified that both federal agencies and NGOs have been “hijacked by criminal networks” and operate behind the “scale and the mismanagement” of the immigration system.
Hopper said that post-placement welfare checks were limited to two phone calls. “If the sponsor didn’t answer, the case was no longer followed up on,” she replied.
FOX’s MacDonald noted the Biden administration set up a huge conglomerate of 230 nonprofits, 15 U.N. agencies and funneled $6 billion in taxpayer money to help the children. But they delivered them to poorly vetted sponsors with little to no oversight or case management.
“Well, we’d come back to Washington, D.C. and tell our Democratic friends, who by the way never went to the border in all those years of the Biden administration,” Tuberville told host MacDonald. “They didn’t want to see what was going on, but as you said it was all human trafficking and these kids weren’t vetted.”
Tuberville said he and colleague Grassley pushed the Biden administration to establisher tougher policies and procedures regarding unaccompanied minors.
“Do something about it and do it the right way,” he said. “Put them somewhere, identify them. Let’s know where they’re going. They wanted nothing to do with it.”
Tuberville added: “I think it was all by design to be honest but as you said, 300,000, I bet there’s closer to 500,000. That’s an amazing number and we don’t know where they are today.”
The ORR National Call Center Helpline is intended as a resource for unaccompanied children, parents and sponsors, and can be reached by calling 1-800-203-7001 or emailing [email protected]. The Administration for Children and Families also provides a list of hotlines for various issues, including child abuse and human trafficking.
