Finding Missing Children and Addressing Immigration Fraud

Mark Krikorian; John Fabbricatore

By Mark Krikorian and John Fabbricatore on October 29, 2026

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Summary

The Office of Refugee Resettlement is working to locate hundreds of thousands of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) who entered the United States during the Biden administration and were placed with sponsors without adequate vetting.

John Fabbricatore, a special advisor at the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), joins host and executive director of the Center, Mark Krikorian, in this episode of Parsing Immigration Policy to discuss the effort to locate these children, investigate reports of abuse and trafficking, and improve his department’s ability to vet sponsors.

Among the topics discussed:

The effort to locate UACs: Fabbricatore describes the Trump administration’s efforts to locate children placed with sponsors during the Biden administration.
Reports of abuse, neglect, and trafficking: Fabbricatore discusses thousands of notices of concern involving children, including reports of possible human trafficking, abuse, sexual abuse, and medical emergencies.
TVPRA: Krikorian and Fabbricatore discuss the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), which generally treats children from contiguous countries differently from children arriving from noncontiguous countries.
Legal representation for children: The speakers discuss a recent controversy over a child appearing in immigration court without legal representation, the federal government's previous contract for legal services, and efforts to establish alternative arrangements.

Krikorian concludes the episode by discussing a federal case involving alleged staged armed robberies organized to help illegal aliens fraudulently qualify for U visas, which are available to certain crime victims who assist law enforcement. He argues that the case illustrates the broader issue of fraud in the immigration system.