The House Committee on Homeland Security learned this week that a Biden era hotline where unaccompanied migrant children could call to report safety concerns failed to answer 65,000 calls between August 2023 and January 2025.

The hearing earlier this week focused on the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the border crisis during the Biden administration.

Reports began circulating late last year that the Biden administration had lost track of an estimated 300,000 migrant children sent to live with adult sponsors because Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was unable to effectively monitor all children in its system.

Representative Eli Crane (R-AZ) highlighted those reports, saying, “Our colleagues are very upset that we’re having this hearing today. 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.”

Among those testifying in this week’s hearing was Ali Hopper, the president and founder of GUARD Against Trafficking, who testified that both federal agencies and NGOs have been “hijacked by criminal networks” and operate behind the “scale and the mismanagement” of the federal immigration system.

When Hopper was asked about what safeguards were put in place to protect vulnerable unaccompanied children, she told the committee that post-placement welfare checks were limited to just two phone calls and that “If the sponsor didn’t answer, the case was no longer followed up on.”

Hopper also told lawmakers about a notice of concern hotline where people could report concerns about the unaccompanied child’s safety, saying, “What this administration found was from August 2023 to January of 2025, 65,000 calls went unanswered. Those calls spanned from complaints about stale bread all the way to being abused.”

Hopper told lawmakers of one case where a child reported that adult men were coming into his room at night and touching him, yet that call, like thousands of others, initially went unanswered.

According to Hopper, it wasn’t until the Trump administration took office that the calls were reviewed and welfare checks conducted, resulting in the child being rescued and the sponsor being arrested.