Authored by Savannah Hulsey Pointer and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times,

Around 157,000 children who crossed the border as unaccompanied minors have been found since the start of the Trump administration while many are still missing, White House border czar Tom Homan told The Epoch Times.

In an interview with senior editor Jan Jekielek for "American Thought Leaders," airing on Sept. 26, he said that just under half a million children were "smuggled" into the United States during the Biden administration.

Homan said officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) at the time were proud of the fact that children weren't in detention for long.

"They weren't [held] very long, but the problem is they released them quickly because the sponsors weren't properly vetted," he said, and with caretakers not responding to communications or check-ins, that caused the government to lose track of nearly 300,000 of the children.

Homan said that when President Donald Trump asked him to return to the federal government under his second administration, one of the top directives he was given was to address the problem of missing children.

"He asked me to do three things: secure the border, run deportation operations, and find these kids."

The border czar said he was much more optimistic about the first two directives than he was about finding the children, because his team would have to count on the digital footprint of the sponsors, based on information provided by the sponsors.

"We can find you, we can find me. We own homes, we own cars, we have credit cards. We can find us because we all have a digital footprint. Children don't," Homan said.

Some Democrats on Capitol Hill have objected to the treatment of unaccompanied minors after they've been located.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) condemned the current administration in June for plans to deport some of the children back to Mexico.

"You have been entrusted with the care and safety of the children placed within the [Office of Refugee Resettlement] network," Wyden said in a letter to the HHS. "Proceeding with this plan knowingly endangers their lives and violates your duty to these vulnerable children."

When officials began searching for the children, they learned that many of the sponsors had given the wrong information, such as home addresses that turned out to be supermarkets, parking lots, or churches. False names had been used for identification, and locating where the children actually were proved to be a massive undertaking.

Homan told The Epoch Times that of the roughly 157,000 children who have been found, more than 20 have died - some due to natural causes, and others from a drug overdose or as a result of violence.

The work isn't done, however, and he said he intends to find every one of the 140,000 still missing children, even those who have aged out of the system.

"Just because you're 18 and 19 doesn't mean they're not in forced labor or sex trafficking, so we're going to keep running down every one of these leads until we find them," the border czar said.

In 40 years of working at the border Homan has seen many victims of human trafficking, but one in particular broke his heart. He said he'll never forgot a 9-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted while making the journey to the United States years ago: "That little girl's never going to be the same again."

"Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime. You don't come across the border without approval and paying off the cartels," he said. "A lot of women and children are sexually assaulted making that journey."

Last month, HHS announced that the Trump administration had located more than 148,000 unaccompanied illegal immigrant children who had been missing after being released into the care of someone in the United States.

A statement from the Department of Homeland Security last November announced an initiative partnering with local law enforcement to conduct welfare checks on the lost children.

Homan told The Epoch Times that despite the monumental task of finding the still missing children, "We're not giving up."

"President Trump has promised that we're going to look at this until the last day of the administration, and the American people can have my word that we're going to do that."