GOP senator uses nominee vetting time to push Trump's debunked 'lost children' accusation

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) used part of his time questioning the nominee to lead the Department of Justice to launch into an aside repeating Donald Trump's misleading claim that the Biden administration has "lost" hundreds of thousands of immigrant children.

Trump claimed in his Person of the Year interview with Time magazine that the Biden administration lost track of more than 300,000 migrant children who crossed the border unaccompanied.

"We have 325,000 children here during Democrats — and this was done by Democrats — who are right now slaves, sex slaves or dead," Trump said at the time. "And what I will be doing will be trying to find where they are and get them back to their parents."

Cruz repeated the dubious claim Wednesday as he spoke to the Senate Judiciary Committee during time meant for questioning nominee Pam Bondi.

"One statistic every American should know is the number 300,000," said Cruz. "There are over 300,000 children that this administration has lost. Little girls and little boys who came here unaccompanied were in this administration's custody. They handed them over to adults. Many of them are not blood relatives. They don't know where they are. I've never seen a single Democrat on this committee ask one question about the 300,000 children."

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An August report published by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General faulted Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, for failing to consistently “monitor the location and status of unaccompanied migrant children” once they are released from federal government custody.

"ICE was not able to account for the location of all [unaccompanied children] who were released by HHS and did not appear as scheduled in immigration court. ICE reported more than 32,000 UCs failed to appear..." the report said.

However, the claim misrepresents that half of the period in which the unaccompanied minors failed to appear for immigration court dates came during Trump's time in the Oval Office.

As the Washington Post wrote in a June fact-check, "When Trump was president, he implemented a 'zero tolerance' policyat the border that resulted in children being separated from their families. The policy was widely condemned before Trump reversed course. President Biden, calling it 'a moral failure,' made it a major issue in the 2020 presidential campaign. After Biden took office, he formed a task force to identify about 5,000 children who had been separated from their families."

"The children aren’t missing — and they aren’t dead. In effect, they haven’t responded to phone calls from a government agency," the Post continued.

Experts have echoed similar remarks as the Post analysis.

"This is not a 'missing kids' problem; it's a 'missing paperwork' problem,"Jonathan Beier, an associate director of research at the Acacia Center for Justice's Unaccompanied Children Program, which helps represent migrant children, told CBS News last month.

Trump aide Stephen Miller, who drafted the new ICE policy at the time, will return to the new administration.

See Cruz's video below or at the link here.

- YouTubeyoutu.be