Noem Tells Senate Under Oath That Biden's Government Funded Individuals Who Were 'Knowingly Trafficking' Migrant Children

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath on Tuesday that the Biden administration had directly funded individuals who were actively trafficking unaccompanied migrant children. The testimony, delivered during an oversight hearing on 3 March 2026, drew immediate attention across party lines.

'The government was paying individuals that were knowingly trafficking them and abusing them. That has stopped,' Noem said. She also revealed that roughly 145,000 children who had been lost under the previous administration had since been located. 'Unaccompanied alien children were lost by the Biden administration, not tracked. We've located about 145,000 of them,' she said.

A Pattern of Failures Under Biden

Noem's testimony did not emerge in isolation. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley had already confirmed in his opening statement at the same hearing that the Trump administration had located over 145,000 children lost through what he described as 'Biden failures', adding that the previous administration had 'disgracefully released children to improperly vetted sponsors with addresses [that corresponded to] gas stations, shopping malls, movie theatres and even Disney World.'

The scale of those failures had already been documented at the institutional level. A DHS Office of Inspector General report confirmed that the Biden-Harris administration lost track of hundreds of thousands of migrant children, placed children with dangerous sponsors, restricted information sharing with law enforcement agencies, and actively limited federal officers' ability to act. Federal officers also failed to enrol over 233,000 migrant children in immigration proceedings, and more than 43,000 of those enrolled failed to appear in court.

Separately, HHS data reviewed by Grassley's office revealed that between January 2021 and January 2025, over 11,000 migrant children were placed with unvetted sponsors who were not their parents or legal guardians and had not been fingerprinted or subjected to background checks —a direct violation of US federal law.

Bipartisan Scrutiny at the Hearing

Tuesday's hearing was not without tension for Noem herself. The most contentious part of the hearing came when Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, described Noem's tenure as a 'disaster' and vowed to block administration nominees and bring Senate business to a halt until she addressed concerns about stonewalling internal investigations. Some Democratic senators also lamented the five-week gap between the death of Alex Pretti and the hearing, with one statement reading: 'With all of the violence and deaths involving DHS, the Secretary is apparently in no hurry to account for her mismanagement of this national crisis.'

The hearing also comes as the DHS remains in a partial shutdown, with Congress yet to agree on a funding deal for the agency.

The sworn testimony from Noem represents one of the most direct official accusations levelled against the Biden administration regarding the handling of unaccompanied migrant children. While Republicans have long raised long-standing concerns about the UC programme, testimony made under oath before the Senate carries significant legal and political weight. With over 65,000 reports regarding migrant children — including more than 7,300 human trafficking reports — said to have been ignored or dismissed during the Biden era, calls for accountability are unlikely to quiet down.