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Friday, May. 23, 2025

Have 900 unaccompanied migrant children been released into the custody of one Arizona man?

Carmela Guaglianone, Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting
no

There is no evidence to suggest that hundreds of unaccompanied migrant children have been released to the same sponsor. 

Unaccompanied migrant children are typically allowed to stay in the U.S. while they await immigration hearings. The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement is responsible for matching them with sponsors. 

Before a child is released, a prospective sponsor must go through a vetting process that may include proving their relationship to the child and passing a background check. ORR prioritizes placing children with parents or close relatives first, followed by more distant relatives. The agency may then turn to non-relatives, such as family friends. 

From October 2024 through April 2025, about 9% of unaccompanied children placed with sponsors were released to non-relatives. Reports of migrant children working full-time jobs after being released to sponsors have raised concerns about potential labor exploitation in recent years.

See a full discussion of this at Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

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The Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting is the state’s only independent, nonpartisan and collaborative nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting. AZCIR's mission is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable by exposing injustice and systemic inequities through investigative journalism.

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