A new HHS review says fraudulent identities, altered photos, false addresses and other deception affected sponsor vetting in the federal unaccompanied minors program, with some children allegedly released into dangerous situations after safeguards failed.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
The Department of Health and Human Services said Thursday that an internal review of the federal program responsible for placing unaccompanied migrant children with sponsors uncovered six recurring forms of fraud, including falsified identities, manipulated photographs and attempts to conceal who was actually living in prospective sponsors’ homes.
The findings were detailed in a newly released Office of Refugee Resettlement memorandum examining cases handled during the Biden administration. HHS said its Office of the General Counsel and ORR identified fraudulent conduct involving actual and prospective sponsors, children in federal custody and, in some cases, people in the children’s countries of origin.
Read the Full Memorandum: CLEAN—ORR-MEMO_Final_.2-PDF
The six categories identified by investigators were false or fraudulent identity documents, manipulated photographs, false or unverifiable addresses, fingerprint-related fraud, failure to disclose household members and children misrepresenting their ages.
HHS said the concern was not limited to fraudulent paperwork itself. The review concluded that intentional deception by some sponsors undermined safeguards intended to determine whether adults seeking custody of children were who they claimed to be and whether the homes receiving those children were safe.
Between 2021 and 2024, approximately 479,000 unaccompanied minors were referred to ORR after arriving at the northern or southern U.S. border, according to the department. The Department of Homeland Security transfers such children to HHS custody, after which ORR generally evaluates prospective sponsors before approving their release.
The newly disclosed review examined Child-Level Event reports involving suspected fraud from the previous administration. ORR recorded 1,669 fraud-related reports between Oct. 1, 2023, and Oct. 31, 2024, according to HHS. The Office of the General Counsel reviewed a subset of those cases and determined that approximately 85% of the cases it examined involved intentional document fraud.
HHS also said ORR data showed intentional documentation fraud accounted for approximately 77% of reported Child-Level Events involving fraud during the period analyzed. Those percentages apply to reported fraud events and the subset examined by the department, not to the hundreds of thousands of children referred to ORR overall.
The department said the influx of unaccompanied children beginning in 2021 led ORR during the Biden administration to loosen some sponsor-vetting requirements and accelerate releases. In fiscal 2024, fewer than 1% of sponsorship applications were denied, according to HHS.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sharply criticized the previous administration in an accompanying HHS statement.
“The Biden Administration failed in its most basic responsibility: protecting vulnerable children in federal care,” Kennedy said. “It weakened safeguards and prioritized speed over scrutiny, leaving children exposed to fraud, exploitation, and abuse.
“Under President Trump, HHS is restoring rigorous oversight, verifying who takes custody of these children, and putting their safety first,” he continued. “We will hold this system accountable and never sacrifice a child’s safety for bureaucratic convenience.”
One case highlighted by HHS involved a 15-year-old girl released in August 2023 to a man who claimed to be her biological brother.
According to the department, ORR did not obtain fingerprints or DNA evidence to confirm the claimed family relationship before releasing the teenager. Authorities later determined that the man was not her brother and alleged that he raped and impregnated her. HHS said the man has been charged by state authorities and the case remains under investigation.
The department cited another case involving a 17-year-old boy released in July 2024 to a person who claimed to be his stepsister. The prospective sponsor presented Venezuelan documents that HHS said could not be authenticated. Three months later, the teenager was found dead in the back seat of a vehicle alongside an unconscious 30-year-old man, according to the department.
HHS did not say in its announcement that the fraudulent sponsorship itself caused the teenager’s death. It cited the case as an example of the potential consequences when sponsor identities or relationships cannot be reliably verified.
The review describes several ways people allegedly attempted to circumvent the vetting process.
False identity documentation could be used to misrepresent a sponsor’s name, age, citizenship, immigration history or purported relationship to a child. Manipulated photographs could make separate identity documents appear to belong to the same person or support a claimed family connection that did not exist.
Investigators also identified prospective sponsors who supplied addresses that could not be verified or otherwise misrepresented where a child would live after leaving federal custody. Accurate address information is critical because ORR must assess the proposed placement and determine who else may have access to the minor.
Failure to disclose household members presented a related problem. A sponsor could appear to pass the required checks while omitting another adult living in the residence who might otherwise have triggered additional screening or raised concerns about the child’s safety.
Fingerprint-related fraud created another challenge, according to the review. Fingerprinting is intended to verify identity and permit criminal-history screening in cases where it is required, but deceptive practices can undermine those safeguards if the individual submitting fingerprints is not the person represented in the sponsorship application.
HHS also identified cases in which children themselves allegedly misrepresented their ages. Age is significant in the ORR system because federal procedures and legal obligations differ depending on whether a person is classified as an unaccompanied minor.
The department said enhanced verification could have prevented at least some of the fraudulent practices uncovered in its review. Among the measures highlighted were stronger identity checks and greater scrutiny of relationships between children and prospective sponsors.
The findings put renewed attention on a central tension that confronted ORR during the large increase in border referrals beginning in 2021: moving children out of federal shelters quickly while still conducting enough investigation to determine whether prospective sponsors represented safe placements.
Federal custody is intended to be temporary, and many sponsors are parents or other relatives seeking to reunite with children. But the new review argues that reducing scrutiny to accelerate that process created opportunities for people using fraudulent documents or false information to defeat safeguards.
The department’s conclusions do not mean that fraud occurred in most sponsorships during the period. Rather, investigators examined fraud reports generated within the program and identified patterns among those cases, including a high prevalence of intentional document manipulation in the subset reviewed.
HHS said the current administration has begun restoring more stringent sponsor-vetting requirements and placing greater emphasis on establishing identities and relationships before children leave federal custody.
The review now provides the department with six specific fraud patterns to target as it changes those procedures — and documents cases in which officials say failures to verify the people taking custody of vulnerable minors had consequences far beyond falsified paperwork.
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