During a Senate hearing Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas refused to explain why an exponential surge in child smuggling and exploitation has happened under his watch and denied that the Department had lost track of 85,000 of these children.

Since the beginning of Fiscal Year 2021, 345,807 unaccompanied minors have been allowed to enter the United States through the southwest land border, U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics show.

As American Greatness has previously reported, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) habitually releases migrant children to unvetted “sponsors” who force them to take on grueling jobs, or be sexually exploited. In some cases, dozens of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) have been sent to the same residence of an unvetted sponsor.