HHS Launches Hotline Campaign for 479,000 Migrant Children Who Entered the U.S. Alone Under Biden

The Department of Health and Human Services is releasing a 30-second public service video this week aimed at nearly half a million migrant children who crossed into the United States alone before January 2025, according to the Daily Wire, which reported it obtained details of the campaign.

The animated video, subtitled in Spanish, shows a child walking alone before being shown doing cleaning and construction work. It directs kids who are being forced to work, exploited, or feel unsafe to call the Office of Refugee Resettlement's National Call Center.

"If you're one of the nearly 479,000 children that came to the U.S. alone prior to January 2025, without family, without support, if you're being forced to work, experiencing exploitation, or feeling unsafe, help is available," the video states, according to the Daily Wire.

Why the number is so large

The 479,000 figure traces back to an August 2024 inspector general's report that found federal authorities had lost track of roughly 320,000 migrant children after releasing them to sponsors who, in many cases, were poorly vetted. That report covered cases from October 2018 through September 2023, spanning both the Trump and Biden administrations, though the bulk of the surge occurred under Biden-era border policy.

According to that inspector general data, roughly 291,000 of these children were never given future court dates at all, which made it nearly impossible for the government to track their whereabouts. Another 32,000 were given hearing dates but never showed up.

John Fabbricatore, a senior HHS advisor leading the tracking effort and a former ICE field office director in Denver, told the Daily Wire the existing hotline system under Biden had a severe backlog problem: 65,000 calls went unanswered. The new PSA is meant to push more kids toward a system HHS says is now more responsive.

"It's a tool in our toolbox that we can put out there to hopefully get some information on children that are still out there," Fabbricatore said.

What happens after a call

Fabbricatore said once a child reports abuse through the hotline, Homeland Security Investigations will "immediately" open a case, often within hours, and begin trying to locate the child. HHS is betting that direct outreach, in the children's own language, will surface kids who fell through the cracks of a system that by its own inspector general's admission lost track of hundreds of thousands of minors.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Monday that federal authorities have now located more than 148,000 of the previously unaccounted-for children. Mullin said the administration "will not stop fighting until every last one is rescued."

That leaves roughly two-thirds of the originally missing population still unlocated, based on the numbers Mullin and the inspector general's office have put out. Whether the new PSA campaign meaningfully closes that gap is unknown, since it depends on trafficking victims or exploited children having phone access, knowing English or Spanish literacy isn't a barrier, and trusting a government hotline enough to call it.

The fair question about the framing

Critics of blanket "lost children" framing have a reasonable point: not every child the government can't immediately locate is a trafficking victim. Many sponsors are relatives or family friends who simply never updated an address with immigration courts, and failure to appear for a hearing doesn't by itself prove abuse or exploitation. The inspector general's report documented a tracking failure, not confirmed trafficking in all 320,000 cases.

That distinction matters. A federal system that cannot say with confidence where hundreds of thousands of children are is a system that cannot rule out abuse either. The Biden-era hotline's 65,000 unanswered calls is itself evidence of an operational failure independent of how many of those calls involved genuine emergencies.

What's unresolved

HHS has not said what percentage of the 148,000 located children were found to be in exploitative situations versus simply living safely with sponsors who hadn't been in contact with authorities. That breakdown would clarify how much of this crisis is a paperwork and tracking failure versus an active trafficking problem. Neither HHS nor DHS has released that data as of this week.