Open borders led to an explosion of human trafficking victims. We can stop it.

A humanitarian crisis has been unfolding inside America's borders, largely ignored for years: the mass trafficking of vulnerable children. National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month comes to a close this year, with a promising update: 2,700 child exploitation victims have been located by the Department of Justice in just one year under President Trump’s leadership. These are 2,700 innocent lives restored, but the work is by no means done. With continued aggressive federal action underway and ensuring criminal networks under remain under constant pressure, the America First Movement is intensifying its campaign to expose the failures that enable exploitation, advance policies that put the safety of children first, and eradicate child trafficking nationwide.

During their time in office President Biden and “Border Czar” Harris did not merely ignore rampant human trafficking across America’s southern border; they enabled the mass import of vulnerable minors while emboldening smugglers to grow criminal networks at the expense of their victims and the American people. The scale was unimaginable, and historic.

Time and again red flags were raised constantly about the damage caused by their policies. As Tara Lee Rodas, a former Health and Human Services (HHS) official, testified before Congress, “[These children] have no idea they’re being trafficked. They know they’re going to work, but they don’t understand the situation they’re about to be in.”

Due to this malpractice and the urgent need to reverse course, the America First Policy Institute recently launched the Americans Combating Child Exploitation Initiative to research and advance legislative proposals and assist federal and state leaders in strengthening child protection systems.

As cartels and criminal aliens flooded the country, Biden’s Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and HHS routinely failed to protect unaccompanied immigrant children. Of the more than 500,000 unaccompanied children encountered at the Southern Border during the Biden-Harris Administration, over 320,000 could not be accounted for in late 2024.

In fact, new reports now expose systemic failures and bureaucratic decisions that undermine the safety of those children. Under Biden and Harris, DHS and HHS repeatedly released unaccompanied migrant children to unvetted sponsors such as distant “relatives” or individuals who claimed no relation at all. Additionally, HHS weakened background checks for sponsors, and failed to record or share addresses of sponsors, making it impossible to track children. When addresses were recorded, they reveal children were regularly taken to unsafe environments in areas with increased gang activity and high violent crime rates.

The Biden-Harris Administration made a concerted effort, in fact, to protect traffickers at the expense of victims. Despite warnings that policies imposed by agency officials would jeopardize the safety of children released to unknown sponsors, a 2021 agreement between DHS and HHS restricted the sharing of sponsors’ biometric information with law enforcement.

To be clear –these were intentional policy decisions, not simply an oversight.

These disastrous policies ended with President Trump took office, and were replaced with a mandate to save these forgotten children. With renewed resolve and commitment to targeting traffickers and locating these vulnerable children, the Trump Administration has taken bold action to rapidly reinstate strict border enforcement and execute interagency coordination that had been dismantled previously.

In March 2025, Trump’s HHS began investigating a backlog of more than 65,000 previously ignored reports of unaccompanied children who crossed the border To date, more than 62,400 missing children have been found by law enforcement and the work continues.

Under any other President, the rescue of tens of thousands of children would draw bipartisan praise. Instead, radical open-border activists have responded by defending these egregious policies and attacking law enforcement officers carrying out these rescues.

The mission is ongoing, but the critical actions of the Trump Administration have laid the groundwork for continued efforts to locate these vulnerable children and prosecute their captors, while also dismantling sprawling criminal networks and the host of other organized crimes underpinned by human trafficking.

The true nature of leadership on this issue is revealed in a simple question: Should we govern in defense of ideology or in defense of innocent lives? The contrast in answers could not be clearer.