There are still tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors at the southern border being released to sponsors in the U.S.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Refugee Resettlement, 10,720 unaccompanied minors have been released into the country so far in Texas in fiscal year 2024 (since Oct. 1, 2023). The previous fiscal year (Oct. 1, 2022 to Sept. 30, 2023) there were 16,394.
The number of illegal border crossings has gone down in recent months but there the number of unaccompanied minors encountered at the southern border is cause for concern.
Chris Cabrera, Vice President of the National Border Patrol Council, said the situation being better than bad doesn't mean it's good.
"Especially when you're dealing with unaccompanied minors," he said. "Most of them are 7 to 10 and that's scary that a minor is traveling by themselves through multiple countries in care of a smuggler."
Texas saw the highest number of unaccompanied children (19,071) released to U.S. sponsors in Texas in fiscal year 2022. Cabrera said this type of behavior shouldn't be rewarded.
"It's not right. You shouldn't put them with a parent that's already here," said Cabrera.
Border patrol will gather information on the children first but there's multiple stages that take place in a process after that. The children will then be transferred to ICE and the Department of Health and Human Services. From there, the children are assigned to a chaperone where they both get on a plane and go wherever the sponsor is in the United States.
"The scary thing is is the vetting of it and the government is not the most efficient thing in the world and a lot of these kids are getting lost in the system or being placed with people that they shouldn't be placed with," said Cabrera.
The number of unaccompanied children transferred to the care of sponsors that have been lost is reportedly close to 100,000.