Independent journalist Nick Shirley has ignited a political firestorm with a 43-minute documentary released on X that alleges the Biden administration's handling of unaccompanied migrant children amounted to the largest government-funded human trafficking operation in American history.
According to Gateway Pundit, Shirley's film charges that taxpayer money fueled a sprawling network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that profited as minors were moved across the country. "Your tax dollars trafficked over 300,000 children across the United States while NGOs enriched themselves with millions of dollars," Shirley says, pointing to contracts in which he says one NGO alone received $895 million while others collected more than $100 million apiece.
Shirley says groups operating in places such as Tucson, Arizona, took in large sums during the border surge but have seen that funding dry up since enforcement tightened under President Donald Trump. He argues the Biden administration opened a pipeline for both illegal crossings and federal dollars to NGOs with minimal accountability.
The documentary features former Border Patrol agents who say they saw children arriving with the same addresses written on their arms. Flight attendants describe regularly seeing groups of five to ten minors put on planes, and in one on-camera confrontation an NGO staffer simply walks away when asked what happened to the children placed in the system.
Shirley said the project took months of filming across multiple states. His post sharing the film has racked up roughly 1.5 million views.
The documentary's 300,000 figure tracks with a 2024 report from the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General, which found ICE transferred more than 448,000 unaccompanied children to HHS between fiscal years 2019 and 2023 but, as of May 2024, had not issued Notices to Appear for more than 291,000 of them. More than 32,000 others failed to appear for scheduled hearings, and tens of thousands of release addresses were blank, undeliverable, or incomplete.
The OIG warned that children who do not appear in court face a higher risk of trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor. In June, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the administration had located 146,000 of the children and that "nearly 300,000" were still missing, while officials cited 81,000 sponsor addresses that had been used more than once.
Federal officials have since put the number of children located at about 157,000, and HHS's refugee office has said it is still searching for more than 85,000, noting that many in the original group are now adults. Shirley's $895 million figure comes from the documentary's own review of contracts, and the recipient was not named in the Gateway Pundit report.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee amplified the film by quote-tweeting Shirley's post. "If NGOs are 'non-governmental organizations,' then why should government fund them? Defund NGOs!" Lee wrote.
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