July 16, 2025 – Experts reveal how taxpayer-funded NGOs facilitated and profited from child trafficking

In Email/Dossier/Govt Corruption Investigations, Featured Timeline Entries by Katie Weddington

This week, the House Committee on Homeland Security held a hearing detailing how non-governmental organizations (NGOs) helped facilitate and benefited from the historic Biden-Harris border crisis, as well as how far-left NGOs are still working to help inadmissible aliens undermine federal immigration law under the Trump administration. Tuesday, Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability Chairman Josh Brecheen (R-OK) penned an op-ed in the New York Post outlining the importance of this hearing and the Committee’s investigation into these organizations.

Witnesses included Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project; Ali Hopper, president and founder of GUARD Against Trafficking; and Julio Rosas, a national correspondent for Blaze Media––all of whom have investigated or reported on how these organizations work with Democrat officials and open-borders advocates to advance a pro-illegal immigration agenda.

In the hearing, witnesses laid out in detail how NGOs received more than $6 billion from the Biden-Harris administration, including through grants from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and others. They also testified about how the Biden-Harris administration handed over unaccompanied alien children (UACs) to NGOs, primarily at the border, who then delivered them to poorly-vetted sponsors. The Biden-Harris administration then failed to ensure proper follow-up communications to check on the well-being of the children, leading to more than 300,000 children unaccounted for in the interior. Simultaneously, many of these NGOs and their executives enjoyed substantial revenue and salary increases thanks to the grants.

In his opening statement, Rosas revealed exactly how NGOs helped incentivize migrants to make the dangerous journey to the United States:

“The NGOs located along the border were often the first place processed migrants went to after being released by Border Patrol. These organizations helped the Biden-Harris administration avoid the bad optics of released migrants having to be on the street due to the large volume of overcrowding in certain sectors. Even with those efforts, the mass overcrowding still resulted in people sleeping on the streets, sometimes during the winter. 

“Ultimately, the goal of these NGOs was to get people to their desired destination within the United States and get them settled in, even though their legal status was far from being secured. I would often see volunteers or staffers at the airport when I left the border guiding these processed migrants to ensure they made their flight. A few times I saw them ushering unaccompanied minors. This is haunting to think back on now knowing Biden’s HHS lost track of thousands of minors once they reached their supposed final destination.

“By having this guaranteed help once they reached U.S. soil, illegal aliens had greater incentive to put their lives in danger by traversing through the Darien Gap and cartel-controlled territory in Mexico. One shelter in El Paso told me in 2023 around 80 percent of the women who came to them had been raped, sometimes in front of their children. This highlights that despite the NGOs having the stated goal of helping these people, their ‘help’ ends up harming the people who used their services. Yes, they made it to the U.S., but at what cost?”


Howell detailed how NGOs helped the Biden-Harris administration facilitate mass illegal immigration:

“Simply put—under the Biden administration’s open border policies, the government could only do so much to facilitate mass illegal migration, welcome the illegal aliens to the United States, and move them around the country. It needed help and open borders organizations jumped at the opportunity to fill the void. The Biden administration repaid them by driving an estimated $6 billion to a conglomerate of 15 UN agencies and 230 NGOs, as recently calculated by the Center for Immigration Studies, to do this work for them. In doing so, the Biden administration turned the Border Patrol into nothing more than a welcome center—a day care—and glorified Uber drivers that ferried illegal aliens to open-borders organizations. In turn, the open borders organizations facilitated mass migration of illegal aliens throughout the interior of the United States.”


Hopper’s opening statement provided first-hand accounts from contracted compliance officers, which detailed how the NGO Endeavors failed to protect the UACs in their care:

“‘Staff were hired without completed fingerprinting or thorough background checks.’ ‘Male staff were found inside female dorms.’ ‘A contractor led 150 teenage girls, minors in sexually explicit dance routines, teaching them how to twerk. He did it twice—once at the facility’s ribbon-cutting, and again months later—before an on-site compliance officer demanded intervention.’ ‘Children collapsed after being subjected to massive vaccination protocols with no parental consent and no clear medical follow-up.’ ‘Two compliance officers discovered a female housed alone in a dorm who was over 18 years of age. Endeavors was shielding her from ICE. In other cases, UACs on the verge of turning 18 were released early to avoid ICE transfer.’ ‘An Endeavors employee that raised concerns about too many children being sent to a single address was terminated.’ ‘A former ICE employee with a background in case management, serving as a contracted compliance team lead was actively stonewalled from reviewing child placements.’”


Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement Chairman Michael Guest (R-MS) detailed how NGOs like Southwest Key Programs and Endeavors benefited from the border crisis and taxpayer dollars:

“Endeavors received 97 percent of their funding from federal or local grants. They weren’t out raising money; they weren’t out there ringing the bell… They were instead an arm of the federal government in that they received 97 percent of their funding. And then Southwest Key Properties was an NGO that blew past that––99 percent of their funding came from grants from the federal government. And what did these organizations do with that?”

“In 2020, Endeavors reported $52 million in revenue. In 2021, they reported $658 million in revenue––a $600 million increase in a year, with 97 percent of that money coming from the federal government. And then in 2022, they reported a record $1.18 billion from the federal government––or at least 97 percent of that. You talk about how executives for Endeavors padded their pockets, that with this increase in revenue comes an increase in salary, that the compensation for the CEO doubled… In an article from the New York Post, they talk about another one of these nonprofits. They talk about Southwest Key. The headline says, ‘Texas non-profit housing migrant kids took $3 billion in grants from Biden administration and boosted executive salaries up to 139 percent to pull the plug.’”


Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Chairman Andrew Garbarino (R-NY) asked Hopper to share some of the most egregious examples of the activities NGOs engaged in to support the Biden-Harris administration’s open-borders policies: 

“Ms. Hopper, organizations that aided and embedded illegal immigration activities must be held accountable, and the Committee has identified countless non-government organizations that have appeared to have played a larger role in propping up the Biden administration’s border crisis, helping play a role in obscuring the true extent of the lawlessness that occurred over the last four years. Can you highlight some of the most egregious examples of the activities NGOs engaged in to support the Biden administration’s open border policies?”

Hopper answered:

“I think Florida’s grand jury review of the whole unaccompanied children process is a great place to start if people haven’t looked into that. There are numerous situations where you can look at the funding of what the NGOs took in, starting with the 990 [forms]. Then, when you start to zoom in, you look at the program mismanagement, waste, fraud, and abuse. This isn’t about the humanitarian mission. This isn’t about the religious component of the organization, the non-profit. We heard people bring up the religious component of the non-profit. That has nothing to do with that. It has to do with how the humanitarian organization handled the program, handled these children, handled these funds, and handled the sponsors. And they didn’t—they didn’t handle any of that.”

Subcommittee Chairman Garbarino continued:

“Can you also elaborate on the extent to which the Biden administration’s reliance on non-governmental organizations endangered the lives of those children.”

Hopper concluded:

“Once NGOs were sending children to their sponsors, they were supposed to have an individual traveling with them to make sure that they got to their destination. We were actually on a flight with numerous UACs. They were unaccompanied, couldn’t speak the language, and the airline struggled to communicate with them. They were traveling alone. When we spoke with the flight attendants, they outlined numerous situations where children showed up in correct locations [and] CPS would have to be called because the sponsor either didn’t show up [or] they were at the wrong location. They couldn’t communicate with these unaccompanied children, and they were not supposed to be traveling alone. Once they got to that state, there wasn’t a follow-up.”


Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security Chairman Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) asked Hopper about the Biden administration’s failure to keep track of UACs once they were delivered to sponsors:

“How many children do you think that DHS basically lost and didn’t have track of during the four years of the Biden administration that were in the United States?”

Hopper answered:

“The reports vary, but as of the last number that we were made aware of, it was over 325,000 children that went unaccounted for.”

Subcommittee Chairman Gimenez also explained why Democrats refuse to speak out about the atrocities of the Biden border crisis:

“My colleagues on the other side don’t want to speak about this hearing. They want nothing to do with this hearing. Why? Because of the failure. And one of the greatest failures in American history of the Biden administration, I believe, was not keeping track of children. And it wasn’t like the folks that sit on the other side of this aisle weren’t made aware by people sitting on this side of the aisle that it was happening. And they failed to do anything or speak out against this atrocity that was happening to the children that were coming through the border… What we’re trying to bring to light is—we want to make sure this never happens again. We need to bring it to light right now because it wasn’t going to be brought to light under the Biden administration… I thank God that we have President Trump in office who has controlled the border.”


Representative Clay Higgins (R-LA) blasted the Biden-Harris administration for facilitating human trafficking by partnering with these NGOs:

“Much to the chagrin of a whole abhorrent industry of child trafficking that prospered from the open border policies of the Biden administration for four years, 2021—‘22, ‘23, and ‘24. Much to the chagrin of these people that made bank… Mr. Howell, are you aware that ongoing right now, right now in our country, DHS, ICE, FBI, local and state law enforcement agencies [are] working on classified operations to locate, find, and rescue trafficked, tender-aged, mostly girls—we’re talking about girls 14 and younger—across the country that were trafficked into our country in 2021, ‘22, ‘23, and ‘24. Are you aware that those operations are ongoing?”

Howell answered:

“Yes, sir. They’re trying to find the children the Biden administration lost.”

Rep. Higgins continued:

“They’ve rescued so far, 35,000 [kids]…Now, according to Ms. Hopper’s research, which I find fascinating—everybody up here should—70 percent of the documentation turned in by so-called sponsors [were fraudulent or incomplete], which were lined up by who? The NGOs. Through whom primarily? HHS. It was a pipeline, man. We fed a pipeline of tender-aged children into sex trafficking and slave labor into our country. We’re finding these kids—we’re tracking these fraudulent documents.”


Representative Eli Crane (R-AZ) asked Hopper to detail how the Biden-Harris administration failed to protect these children:

“Our colleagues are very upset that we’re having this hearing today. They don’t want to talk about this stuff. They don’t want to talk about the 300,000 kids that we still don’t know where they are. They’re upset that President Trump got elected. They’re upset that he’s doing exactly what he said he was going to do, and we’re backing him up here in Congress. This is what the American people voted for because they saw four years of the carnage that these open border policies plagued on the United States. We’re talking about the NGOs that they used as middlemen to carry out their operations.”

“Ms. Hopper, you’ve worked closely with trafficking victims and survivors. I’d like to explore the role that the NGOs have played in enabling the trafficking and exploitation of unaccompanied alien children. Under the last administration, what safeguards were put in place to protect vulnerable unaccompanied children?”

Hopper answered:

“I previously discussed the post placement welfare checks, which consisted of two phone calls. Again, if the sponsor didn’t answer, the case was no longer followed up on. But there was also a notice of concern hotline where people could report concerns about the unaccompanied child’s safety. But what this administration found was from August 2023 to January of 2025, 65,000 calls went unanswered. Those calls spanned from complaints about stale bread all the way to being abused. One case where a child’s call was reporting that grown men were coming into his room at night, and they were touching him. Nothing happened with that call. That call went unanswered—until this administration took office [and] went through those 65,000 calls, made follow-ups, conducted a welfare check, and now that child has been rescued and that sponsor has been arrested. These are the safeguards that were put in place—but accountability and oversight was not had.”

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(House Homeland Security Committee, 7/17/2025)  (Archive)  (Oversight Project-Witness Testimony, 7/16/2025)