Trump Slams Biden: 325,000 Missing Children, Chaos at the Border

Paul Riverbank, 12/8/2025Border chaos, missing migrant children, and politics collide as Biden, Trump spar over immigration failures.

Call it fallout or a reckoning: the pivot from Biden’s border approach to Trump’s new term has been anything but subtle and nowhere do the effects land heavier than in border communities. Lately, the focus isn’t only on the surge of arrivals or overloaded shelters—it’s on the faces and fates of missing children whose stories now serve as stinging rallying points for critics.

Take Tom Homan, for example—the former “border czar” under Trump, someone the right routinely calls up for stark facts and unvarnished opinions. Homan minced no words during a Fox News segment recently, where he opened a thick binder and scrolled through figures. “Last Friday, I checked the numbers again: over sixty-two thousand children rescued by the Trump administration—children nobody seemed to be counting under Biden.” What haunted Homan? “Some were victims of sex trafficking. Some forced into hard labor. Some… the details are just too brutal to share on air.” His implication was impossible to miss.

According to Homan, there’s more: During Biden’s time in office, over half a million minors, he claimed, slipped across the border—most with smugglers, traffickers, or simply in the chaos. Of those, he said, 300,000 disappeared from official tracking. The headlines followed. Trump, never one to forgo a sharp soundbite, hammered the figures into his campaign script: “325,000 missing migrant children—many have been trafficked and raped.” No matter how thoroughly reporters sifted through agency data (and plenty disputed the exact totals), these claims stuck, leaving the White House fumbling for a response.

From the outset of Biden’s presidency, criticism didn’t let up. In fact, documents from the transition period have since surfaced, including a memo describing what staffers feared: “chaos.” The Biden campaign had wanted a clear break from Trumpian hard-line tactics—a new, humane compact. But even among campaign veterans, there were murmurs. “Ease up too much,” they warned, “and you’ll see a crush at the border.” Within months, skepticism seemed prescient. Numbers of new arrivals doubled, then soared. The lens widened from overrun stations in Texas to straining resources in places like Chicago and Denver.

Insiders, such as Scott Shuchart—once a senior adviser at ICE—later admitted: “There was no border strategy. Just hoping the problem solved itself, so the White House could move on to issues they preferred.” That uncertainty showed. Some Biden advisors balked at appearing too tough, afraid of backlash from the Democratic base. Others watched in alarm as poll numbers sagged.

The scale was staggering: “2.2 million apprehensions on the southern border last year,” as noted by The New York Times. Compare that to roughly 400,000 the year Biden won. By 2023, enormous case backlogs—6 million people waiting, sometimes in crowded city shelters—became a routine part of daily news. Reform efforts did take shape. There were pilot admissions for select groups from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela—people who had sponsors already in the country. But the flood didn’t slow, and officials in large cities like New York sounded increasingly desperate. At one point, Mayor Eric Adams told local press, “The city we know—we’re

about to lose it if this keeps up.”

Washington tried one more time to thread the political needle. Senate negotiators pieced together a bipartisan border deal. Maybe it could help Biden show he wasn’t asleep at the wheel. But in the end, as word spread of Trump’s vocal opposition, Republicans peeled off. The bill died. Fast forward a few months: with the election looming, Biden finally signed a sweeping executive order—blocking nearly all new asylum claims at the border, tougher still than proposals from his own advisers just a year earlier. Among swing voters, it was widely seen as too little, too late. “What held him back for so long?” is now one of the defining questions of his presidency.

Symbolic flashpoints added fuel to the fire. The case of Laken Riley—a nursing student killed by an undocumented immigrant—quickly became a fixture at Trump rallies, a seemingly flesh-and-blood confirmation, for his supporters, of Democratic failure on border enforcement.

And so, Trump’s return set a new tone. Within days, military patrols fanned out along the border, asylum claims virtually halted overnight, and ICE was handed broader marching orders. In the new administration’s own words, “The American people deserve a federal government that puts their interests first.”

Yet, behind all the slogans and numbers looms an unresolved dilemma: how to square strict enforcement with the demand to treat migrants, especially unaccompanied children, with decency and care. In today’s climate, the emphasis leans hard on enforcement. But the legacy of scattered families, missing kids, and financially overwhelmed cities isn’t fading from view. If anything, it’s making the stakes of the next political debate all the clearer—and ensuring Biden’s and Trump’s records will be measured against each other for years to come.

For decades, every modern president has come to learn—sometimes the hard way—that border security in the United States is a volatile and deeply charged challenge, but in the last four years, the temperature, and political consequences, seem to have reached fever pitch.Call it fallout or a reckoning: the pivot from Biden’s border approach to Trump’s new term has been anything but subtle and nowhere do the effects land heavier than in border communities. Lately, the focus isn’t only on the surge of arrivals or overloaded shelters—it’s on the faces and fates of missing children whose stories now serve as stinging rallying points for critics.Take Tom Homan, for example—the former “border czar” under Trump, someone the right routinely calls up for stark facts and unvarnished opinions. Homan minced no words during a Fox News segment recently, where he opened a thick binder and scrolled through figures. “Last Friday, I checked the numbers again: over sixty-two thousand children rescued by the Trump administration—children nobody seemed to be counting under Biden.” What haunted Homan? “Some were victims of sex trafficking. Some forced into hard labor. Some… the details are just too brutal to share on air.” His implication was impossible to miss.According to Homan, there’s more: During Biden’s time in office, over half a million minors, he claimed, slipped across the border—most with smugglers, traffickers, or simply in the chaos. Of those, he said, 300,000 disappeared from official tracking. The headlines followed. Trump, never one to forgo a sharp soundbite, hammered the figures into his campaign script: “325,000 missing migrant children—many have been trafficked and raped.” No matter how thoroughly reporters sifted through agency data (and plenty disputed the exact totals), these claims stuck, leaving the White House fumbling for a response.From the outset of Biden’s presidency, criticism didn’t let up. In fact, documents from the transition period have since surfaced, including a memo describing what staffers feared: “chaos.” The Biden campaign had wanted a clear break from Trumpian hard-line tactics—a new, humane compact. But even among campaign veterans, there were murmurs. “Ease up too much,” they warned, “and you’ll see a crush at the border.” Within months, skepticism seemed prescient. Numbers of new arrivals doubled, then soared. The lens widened from overrun stations in Texas to straining resources in places like Chicago and Denver.Insiders, such as Scott Shuchart—once a senior adviser at ICE—later admitted: “There was no border strategy. Just hoping the problem solved itself, so the White House could move on to issues they preferred.” That uncertainty showed. Some Biden advisors balked at appearing too tough, afraid of backlash from the Democratic base. Others watched in alarm as poll numbers sagged.The scale was staggering: “2.2 million apprehensions on the southern border last year,” as noted by The New York Times. Compare that to roughly 400,000 the year Biden won. By 2023, enormous case backlogs—6 million people waiting, sometimes in crowded city shelters—became a routine part of daily news. Reform efforts did take shape. There were pilot admissions for select groups from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela—people who had sponsors already in the country. But the flood didn’t slow, and officials in large cities like New York sounded increasingly desperate. At one point, Mayor Eric Adams told local press, “The city we know—we’reabout to lose it if this keeps up.”Washington tried one more time to thread the political needle. Senate negotiators pieced together a bipartisan border deal. Maybe it could help Biden show he wasn’t asleep at the wheel. But in the end, as word spread of Trump’s vocal opposition, Republicans peeled off. The bill died. Fast forward a few months: with the election looming, Biden finally signed a sweeping executive order—blocking nearly all new asylum claims at the border, tougher still than proposals from his own advisers just a year earlier. Among swing voters, it was widely seen as too little, too late. “What held him back for so long?” is now one of the defining questions of his presidency.Symbolic flashpoints added fuel to the fire. The case of Laken Riley—a nursing student killed by an undocumented immigrant—quickly became a fixture at Trump rallies, a seemingly flesh-and-blood confirmation, for his supporters, of Democratic failure on border enforcement.And so, Trump’s return set a new tone. Within days, military patrols fanned out along the border, asylum claims virtually halted overnight, and ICE was handed broader marching orders. In the new administration’s own words, “The American people deserve a federal government that puts their interests first.”Yet, behind all the slogans and numbers looms an unresolved dilemma: how to square strict enforcement with the demand to treat migrants, especially unaccompanied children, with decency and care. In today’s climate, the emphasis leans hard on enforcement. But the legacy of scattered families, missing kids, and financially overwhelmed cities isn’t fading from view. If anything, it’s making the stakes of the next political debate all the clearer—and ensuring Biden’s and Trump’s records will be measured against each other for years to come.