Nick Shirley Follows the Money Behind America's Missing Migrant Kids

Earlier this week, Nick Shirley released a new documentary about migrant children who crossed the border alone during the Biden administration. According to Nick, hundreds of thousands of these children are now missing from official records, and he describes it as the largest alleged government-funded human trafficking operation in U.S. history. His reporting traces the money from the border wall to the federally funded NGOs that received the children. You can watch the full video below.

Each child was supposed to go to a sponsor, usually a parent, relative, or family friend already living in the U.S. People Nick interviewed said that almost no one checked who those sponsors were. Art Del Cueto, a Border Patrol veteran of over 20 years and vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, told Nick that children under 13 were not fingerprinted, so smugglers could bring the same child across more than once. He also said that adults without ID claimed to be minors and were released as unaccompanied children. “There was no way to actually track it,” Del Cueto said.

A retired Border Patrol agent who walked the wall with Nick said smugglers used grinding saws to cut through the steel, and sometimes chained sections to a truck to pull them down. He said that sometimes he and one other agent had to manage 500 people at the wall. He told Nick that even children arriving with adults could give false names and relationships, and agents had no way to verify them. There were so many buses that someone at his station made Christmas ornaments shaped like a bus, labeled “Ajo Super Uber.” When Nick asked if he ever thought he would be part of this, the agent replied, “Our motto is honor first. There was no honor in what we were doing.”

A contract specialist who worked at the General Services Administration, which manages federal purchasing, told Nick that HHS used GSA contracts to move children by bus, train, plane, van, and even Uber. One contract gave $895.8 millionto Acuity International, and she said it did not set a limit on the number of children it covered. She still cannot explain why the government paid to move children without having their DNA, photos, or fingerprints. “All I’m going to say is, it’s not for good,” she said.

In Tucson, Nick asked the federally funded NGOs that housed the children before each handoff how they checked who each child went home with. He says none of them could answer. According to Nick, one NGO received $115.9 million in federal money, but he was not allowed past its front gate. Read more about that story below.

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On Monday, Nick Shirley called out an NGO in his investigation by putting a price tag on it. In a post on X, he claimed it "made $115,000,000 to traffic children across the United States." The group, VisionQuest, is a nonprofit that runs youth shelters and foster care programs. According to Nick, federal spending records show VisionQuest got $115.9 million from 2021 to 2024 to shelter and place unaccompanied migrant children.

Nick went to VisionQuest's Tucson building with one question: how did they check who the children were sent to? Unfortunately, he didn’t get past the front gate, which was made of rusted steel scrollwork topped with razor spikes. Nick says staff threatened to call the police before he could even ask his question. When a man finally came to the gate, Nick asked if he knew what happened to the children VisionQuest was paid $115 million to care for, but got no answer. "This is more secure than the southern border was," Nick said.

For a group that Nick says was paid to move kids across the country, it was surprisingly quiet that afternoon. During the 20 minutes Nick stood outside, none of the unmarked, tinted vans in the lot moved, and the police that VisionQuest's staff said they would call never showed up. Nick says VisionQuest is still getting millions in federal funding, and he pointed out what he saw as a double standard. "They want us to abide by these rules, yet they do not actually abide by those rules," he said.

The other Tucson NGOs Nick visited didn’t offer much help either. At one, a receptionist had no information. At another, a woman who had worked there for three years told Nick she didn’t know what happened to the children. Nick made it clear he wasn’t asking for anyone’s address, just how these groups confirmed who each child went home with.

VisionQuest and the other groups Nick visited took millions in federal money to care for children who, Nick says, nobody can account for today, and not one of them could tell him how they checked where those kids went. He posted the VisionQuest breakdown the day before the midterms and ended it with, "This is why it's important to vote." On Tuesday, voters picked the Congress that will oversee the agencies writing these checks, and Nick had a few things to say about the results, continue reading below.

Nick Shirley says Tuesday’s midterms should be a wake-up call “for the right, left and the center.” Democrats won the House and Senate, and Nick’s post-election video goes after both parties, watch below.

In Nick’s telling, Republicans lost this one on their own. They ran candidates “nobody even really knew” and skipped what voters cared about: ending the Iran war, lowering costs, releasing the Epstein files, and keeping Israel out of domestic politics. Democrats ran younger candidates on affordability and knew how to get that message seen on social media. “It worked very well,” Nick said. He thinks Republicans need new messaging and new candidates before the next cycle.

The campaign focused on grocery bills and health care. By Wednesday, Nick said the winners had already shifted to talk of “lawyer up and we’re going to put you in jail.” Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., posted “LAWYER UP” on X, and Sen. Ron Wyden posted “Subpoenas.” Streamer Hasan Piker, in a post Nick showed, promised to “put your ass in jail.” Nick’s replies were filled with strangers telling him he’s going to prison for exposing fraud. “It’s a bit strange, right?” he said.

Nick says Minnesota just elected a “learer” to the legislature. He’s referring to Abdi Daisane, a St. Cloud Democrat whose daycare has had more than a dozen state licensing violations since 2024, according to state records. Daisane won his Minnesota House race on Tuesday. He has not been charged with fraud. Nick also pointed out Michigan’s new senator-elect, Abdul El-Sayed, who campaigned as Abdul El-Sayed but introduced himself on election night as “Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.” “You never heard him say that when he was on his campaign trail,” Nick said.

Nick also showed a poll worker who he says was openly mocking Charlie Kirk’s death at the polls, as well as a crowd rallying for Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother on trial for killing her three children. He then shared an anonymous Bluesky post congratulating America and telling the winners to “KILL. THEM. ALL.” Nick described these messages from the winning side as “very, very concerning.”

Nick said none of this should be divided by party lines. “It’s just what’s right and what’s wrong,” he said. He thought everyone would support his Minnesota daycare reporting, but it turned out to be “super controversial.” When he testified at the Senate’s “Exposing Fraud in America” hearing in July, Nick said no Democrats attended. Nick closed out, “I’ll take you guys with me to the source.” Simply put, Nick isn’t going anywhere and will continue the fight against fraud, waste, and abuse. What are your thoughts on the midterm elections, let us know by replying to this email.