Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered stunning testimony during a June 24 House Energy Committee hearing, accusing the Biden administration of recklessly handing over migrant children to sponsors without proper vetting.
“I’ve witnessed horror stories of the same person picking up child after child after child, using different names and addresses,” Kennedy told lawmakers. “One of the addresses was a strip club. One of the addresses was a parking lot. One was an address with shipping containers.”
“One person got 42 kids to one address,” he added.
Kennedy's testimony adds to the ongoing scrutiny of the Biden administration's handling of unaccompanied minors crossing the southern border.
Reports revealed that under the previous administration, more than 300,000 unaccompanied migrant children were released, many to sponsors who were not properly vetted.
A 2023 New York Times report found that the HHS then lost immediate contact with more than 85,000 minors — roughly one-third of those placed with sponsors between 2021 and 2022. Whistleblowers said staff were pressured to move children quickly, often bypassing safety checks.
CatholicVote reported in May that Kennedy previously accused the Biden-era HHS of becoming “a collaborator in child trafficking for sex and slavery.”
Then-HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra repeatedly faced questions about the hundreds of thousands of migrant children reportedly unaccounted for as lawmakers warned some may have fallen into the hands of pimps, gang members, or sex traffickers.
“They were emphasizing speed over security, and there were political reasons for that,” Kennedy said Tuesday. “They wanted to get the kids out of US custody, so they were handing them off to anybody. They didn’t require background checks. They didn’t require identification, even.”
Since taking office under the second Trump administration, Kennedy said his department has overhauled the vetting process.
“What we’re doing now is DNA testing on every sponsor,” he said. “We’re doing personal identification. We’re doing background checks. And we’re doing income verification.”