The US Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General (HHS-OIG), the government watchdog responsible for oversight of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), published a report Thursday alleging that significant deficiencies in safeguarding unaccompanied migrant children arriving in the US have been discovered.

According to the report, HHS, which is tasked with sheltering unaccompanied migrant children upon their arrival, often transferred them to adult sponsors in the US without thorough screening. Additionally, the report alleged that HHS neglected to conduct timely safety assessments after the children were released. The findings revealed that 16 percent of child case files lacked documentation of sponsor background checks by the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (HHS-ORR) in March and April 2021. In 19 percent of cases where children were released to sponsors pending FBI or state checks, the case files were never updated with results.

The report states that while HHS is mandated to contact all children a month after they start living with adult sponsors, in over one-fifth of cases, HHS staff failed to make these calls promptly, sometimes delaying them for nearly a year. The report also revealed instances where government workers neglected crucial safety checks, such as investigating whether adults had a history of child abuse or verifying the legitimacy of the addresses of sponsors. Additionally, the report found that certain protective measures, such as periodic reviews by case coordinators, were eliminated when shelters became overcrowded.

The report comes as experts are reporting a surge in the number of migrants illegally crossing the southwest border since President Joe Biden took office in 2021. During this period, HHS-ORR faced challenges in swiftly relocating children from congested border processing centers to shelters and the care of family members or other sponsors.

There have been reports of migrant children working in hazardous industrial jobs, in violation of child labor laws across the country. These jobs range from slaughterhouses and factories, to construction sites and beyond. This has prompted the Biden administration to take action against child labor abuses. Over the past year, HHS has established a task force with the Department of Labor (DOL) to detect instances of migrant children being exploited and deliver comprehensive case management services to children upon their release.