U.S. President Joe Biden’s deputies appear to have lost a group of so-called “Unaccompanied Alien Children,” but insist there is no evidence they are under the control of labor traffickers, Bloomberg reported this week.

Citing two unnamed people familiar with the investigation, Bloomberg, which shed light on the federal probe back in August, noted:

At least three agencies looked into reports of potential trafficking or exploitation of unaccompanied migrant children in Enterprise, Ala., and couldn’t substantiate those claims, according to two people familiar with the investigation.

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The Health and Human Services [HHS], Homeland Security [DHS], and Labor departments investigated the Enterprise situation but couldn’t track down most of the minors who were placed with sponsors there, according to the people familiar with the investigation. It’s not uncommon for federal officials to lose contact with unaccompanied children after their release from government custody.

The dead-end in the Enterprise case highlights apparent gaps in the federal system designed to care for children who cross the border without a parent.

Bloomberg suggested some of the children no longer living at the addresses listed on their HHS-approved documents may have fled to a safer location with a relative, highlighting concerns that a network of labor traffickers may have used the Enterprise facility as a “staging area” before moving the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) to other worksites. Some UACs are reportedly adults pretending to be children.

The missing child migrants are a political problem for the administration, in large part because Democrats persuaded some voters in 2020 that they would treat the minors better than former President Donald Trump’s team.

Government officials are reluctant to talk about the commonplace use of UACs in labor trafficking —often labeled “modern-day slavery.”

But a very high percentage of the UACs are older work-ready teenagers. According to HHS data, roughly one-third of the migrants say they are 17. Another third say they are aged 15-16, marking them as ready for work in their home countries. UACs are eligible for work permits.

The cartels earn money because migrants expect to pay off their smuggling debts with dollars earned from U.S. jobs. Many migrants also want U.S. jobs to aid their low-income families in their poor home countries.

For example, Breitbart News reported November 4:

Yery Noel Medina Ulloa, a 24-year-old illegal alien from Honduras, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder in the death of Francisco Javier Cuellar, a father of four children. Prosecutors are also seeking a first-degree murder indictment.

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Ulloa, who turned 24 last week, duped Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) when he showed up at the U.S.-Mexico border months ago, claiming he was an Unaccompanied Alien Child (UAC) named “Reynel Alexander Hernandez,” according to a Univision interview with Ulloa’s mother.

“When he entered [the U.S.] he told me, ‘Mommy, I didn’t go in with my name,’” his mother, Wendy Florencia Ulloa, said, adding that he explained, “‘I went in with the name of another person because right there at the shelter they helped me.’”

In a July 21 email obtained by Bloomberg in August, the director of the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) human trafficking office revealed that “indicators of labor exploitation and/or potential labor trafficking of unaccompanied minors in Alabama” triggered the multi-agency probe into the Enterprise case.

“Some of these situations appear to involve dozens of unaccompanied minors all being released to the same sponsor and then exploited for labor in poultry processing or similar industries without access to education,” the director wrote, noting that several jurisdictions have expressed concerns about the exploitation of migrant children by labor traffickers.

Bloomberg was unable to determine the status of federal probes into UAC-related labor trafficking and exploitation outside Alabama, namely in Oregon and the southeastern part of the country.

HHS’ refugee office cares for UACs after immigration authorities apprehend them at the U.S. border. The department works to reunite them with relatives in the U.S. or play them with a non-family sponsor.

The allegations that HHS officials released migrant teenagers to labor traffickers surfaced as the Biden administration released thousands of migrant children into the U.S. in the wake of a staggering wave that continues to fuel the ongoing politically fraught border crisis.

HHS did not respond to Breitbart News’s request for comment.