Unaccompanied Children

The Unaccompanied Children (UC) Program,* operated by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), provides temporary housing, food, clothing, and other related services to unaccompanied minors in its custody. In 2018, OIG announced that the agency would rapidly deploy multidisciplinary teams to conduct site visits at ORR-funded facilities nationwide to review the care and well-being of all children residing in these facilities, including the subset of children who were separated due to the zero-tolerance policy. As part of this body of work, OIG also reviewed HHS program data and interviewed HHS staff, officials, and senior leadership to understand how HHS identified and tracked separated children. In three weeks, more than 200 OIG staff completed multi-day site visits to 45 ORR-funded facilities across the country. A series of reports are being released as a result of the site visits.

View an interactive timeline of these events. (Text-based version)

*Before March 2021, the Unaccompanied Children (UC) Program was named the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) Program.

Resources

• OIG UC Reports
• YouTube Video Playlist: OIG Oversight of Unaccompanied Children Program

Last updated May 7, 2021