The Biden administration has repeatedly placed unaccompanied migrant children with sponsors that caseworkers had previously dismissed as unsuitable, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Seeking to avoid the “kids in cages” criticism often levelled at the Trump administration, Biden administration officials in 2021 denied caseworkers' safety concerns about unaccompanied minors who are sent to live with parents or other sponsors after arriving in the United States. according to Some migrant children were sent to addresses linked to criminal activity or had documentation indicating they were being forced to work, according to interviews and internal documents obtained by the Journal. (Related: White House signs deal with Panama to crack down on major illegal immigration route to US)

According to the WSJ, a caseworker in Florida who was set to live with several adults in a “hostel-like” home determined that “it would not be safe to release minors into a home environment that has not been adequately evaluated.” Days later, officials rejected the caseworker's recommendation to deny the appointment of a guardian.

Such instances have reportedly occurred multiple times throughout the early days of President Joe Biden's term.

More than 100 children were sent to live with temporary guardians in the summer of 2021 after they had previously been rejected by case coordinators, according to a Journal review of internal data tracking unaccompanied minors and other communications. Some denials were overturned for a variety of administrative issues, but many cases were approved with little explanation.

The WSJ said it was unclear what happened to the children after government authorities released them from migrant facilities.

The federal government had previously acknowledged instances of unaccompanied minors being placed in potentially unsafe homes, and 16% of case files of minors released to sponsors in March and April 2021 “had no documentation indicating checks had been conducted.” according to An internal investigation conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General.

In fiscal year 2021, about 148,000 unaccompanied children and minors arrived at the U.S. border. according to Data released by Customs and Border Protection during Biden's first year in office showed the number of migrant children was at an all-time high. The influx of children as a result of the ongoing border crisis under Biden's administration has put administration officials in the difficult position of not wanting to show images of migrant children being held in overcrowded facilities.

“The sites are well-intentioned but unregulated and unsafe,” Neha Desai, senior director of immigration at the National Center for Juvenile Law, an organization that tracks the protection of migrant children in government custody, told The Wall Street Journal. “There was a lot of pressure on the sites to quickly release children from custody.”

In one case, caseworkers found several different alleged guardians living at different addresses in a U.S. city all connected to the same person, according to the Journal, suggesting sponsors were recruiting minors into their work. In another documented case, a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy was allowed to live with his sponsor in South Texas after a Health and Human Services case coordinator's refusal was overturned, even though another man living at the same address had been charged with a felony for beating his girlfriend a few months earlier.

HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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