Child trafficking with official seal – The US national emergency

Somewhere in America, at this very moment, a girl lies drugged in a locked hotel room, while her next client waits in the hallway. The state received her at the border, counted her, provided for her needs, and then handed her over to a stranger whose fingerprints no one wanted to see, at an address that may not even exist. This is not an isolated incident; it is an administrative process. And it is a national emergency that two successive governments have ignored, managed, and now exploited.

On June 11, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stood before the cameras at the Department of Justice and presented the figures: 146,000 children found, nearly 300,000 still missing. He stated that they were investigating reports that some of these children claimed to have been raped six to seven hundred times . Then he posed the question to everyone, whether liberal, conservative, or somewhere in between: If you don't support the search for these children, then who are you?

Seven hundred times and nobody knows where

Two weeks later, Mullin spoke more explicitly before a congressional committee . He said he was talking about girls raped six to seven hundred times, locked in hotel rooms, heavily drugged, forced to "service" 15 to 20 men a day, one after the other, day after day. No holidays, no nights off, no weekends. And recently, he added, boys were increasingly being trafficked as well. The horror had thus been given a room. He still didn't provide an address, a case number, or name a perpetrator. The fact that the figure nevertheless circulated online as fact says less about Mullin than about a country that has long considered such stories plausible. And plausible they are. The real horror lies not in the fact that a child is said to have been abused seven hundred times. It lies in the fact that no official in Washington can say whether it's true because no one knows where this child lives.

Two houses that don't exist, 34 children

The proof comes not from a press spokesperson, but from the agency's own oversight body. Inspector General Joseph Cuffari raised the alarm in August 2024: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had handed over more than 448,000 unaccompanied children to the Department of Health between October 2018 and September 2023 and could not say what had happened to all of them. More than 32,000 never appeared in court.

In July 2025, he followed up before Congress . For over 31,000 children, the release address was blank, undeliverable, or lacked an apartment number. His auditors, accompanied by ICE officials, visited two addresses to which 34 children had been handed over. Both houses did not exist. Over 233,000 children never received a summons, and over 43,000 failed to appear for their court appearances. According to ICE, these are precisely the children most vulnerable to trafficking, exploitation, and forced labor. The court appearance is the only opportunity to assess a child's welfare. Ironically, in 2021, both departments removed from their agreement the requirement to provide ICE with the fingerprints of all sponsors and their co-residents.

65,605 cries for help in the filing cabinet

The figures Senator Chuck Grassley obtained from the Department of Health and Human Services in May 2025 illustrate what turning a blind eye looks like as a matter of policy: 65,605 reports of children in the program, either ignored or rejected, including 7346 reports of human trafficking and 1688 of fraud. After just over 100 days, 28 percent had been processed, resulting in eleven arrests. In June, the Bureau of Refugee Resettlement counted over 76,000 cases without the required security clearance, over 97,000 without background checks, and over 81,000 addresses to which children were repeatedly sent. A house that collected children like other people collect packages went unnoticed as long as the official stamp was in place. How to manage, rather than combat , human trafficking is not an American invention, but America has industrialized it.

Rescuers with camera crew

The new administration didn't invent the scandal; it discovered it like a campaign poster. Mullin speaks of 450,000 children who disappeared under Biden. However, the Inspector General's count begins in October 2018, the second year in office of a certain Donald Trump, and Cuffari explicitly calls the failure one that persisted across multiple administrations. Mullin claimed, without evidence , that most of the children turned up in so-called safe cities . The dock for those responsible in the ministries remains empty. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche made it clear that he was not accusing the previous leadership from the podium. Three Guatemalans were indicted in Ohio on 19 counts. From the first 28 percent of the mountain of cases, exactly three convictions were obtained by the end of May 2025. Nearly $70 billion was awarded in June for the deportation machine , and the rescued children were offered the opportunity to apply for a visa as a victim of crime.

Even Mullin admitted before the committee that some of the 147,000 people found had been living with relatives and were doing well. Immigration experts, however, argue that these are not missing children, but missing documents . But at an address that doesn't exist, no child with papers will be standing at the door.

Who are you then, America?

The emergency isn't named Mullin or Biden. It's this: A state hands children over to homes that don't exist, files away cries for help, and only acknowledges the misery when it fits into a press conference. The film " Sound of Freedom" packed theaters in 2023, but the files remained untouched. The same outrage that ignites around Epstein and his clients only lasts until the next headline for nameless children without legal representation. 448,000 children handed over, 34 of them to two phantom addresses. 7346 reports of human trafficking, three convictions. Every administration points the finger at the previous one, and behind a hotel door that isn't listed in any register, the twentieth client of the day knocks. Mullin asked who you are if you don't support the search, but no one asks him the counter-question: Who are you, who for five years sent children to addresses that were nothing but empty shells?

Child trafficking with official seal – The US national emergency