Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered a stinging rebuke of the Biden-era HHS on Wednesday, accusing the department of facilitating child trafficking under the guise of immigration management. During a Trump administration Cabinet meeting, Kennedy praised President Trump for “extraordinary leadership” over the first 100 days, while outlining urgent reforms underway.

Kennedy’s comments marked the strongest condemnation yet of the Biden administration’s mishandling of unaccompanied migrant children. “We have ended HHS, as the role as the vector — the principal vector in this country for child trafficking,” Kennedy declared. “During the Biden administration, HHS became a collaborator in child trafficking and for sex and for slavery.”

Kennedy added that the Trump team is actively working to locate and recover roughly 300,000 children that were lost under the Biden administration’s oversight.

Kennedy’s remarks weren’t limited to immigration. He also touted progress on food safety and public health, highlighting HHS and FDA’s joint decision to phase out petroleum-based synthetic food dyes from the U.S. food supply. “We announced last week the ban on the nine petroleum-based synthetic dyes… Within two months, we’re going to ban the worst two of them,” Kennedy noted.

He also revealed collaboration with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to revise dietary guidelines and remove sugary snacks and sodas from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Kennedy is additionally working with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on new federal standards for fluoride.

But it was his comments on trafficking that drew the sharpest response. Kennedy’s allegations were supported by prior whistleblower testimony from Tara Lee Rodas, a former Biden-era HHS staffer, who testified before Congress in 2024 that the U.S. government had become complicit in smuggling unaccompanied minors to dangerous sponsors.

According to Rodas, the Department of Homeland Security transferred migrant children to HHS, which then placed them with adults across the U.S. with minimal vetting. Many of the children, she testified, were later discovered working dangerous jobs in slaughterhouses, restaurants, or factories — sometimes to pay off debts to smugglers. Others, she said, were being “sold for sex.”

Rodas described the program as a “white glove delivery service” for human traffickers. “Some children may die today in jobs they don’t have the knowledge or skills to do,” she warned, adding that “for at least a decade, HHS has been responsible for the suffering of countless children.”

The Trump administration has already launched a sweeping review into child placement policies from the Biden years. Officials estimate nearly 291,000 unaccompanied alien children (UACs) entered the U.S. under the previous administration — and many of them were never tracked.

Kennedy’s commitment to finding these missing children represents a stark shift in priorities. “We are very aggressively going out and trying to find these children,” he said.

The renewed focus on enforcement, transparency, and child protection has already drawn sharp contrast with the Biden administration’s chaotic and controversial border policies. While Democrats have defended their approach as humanitarian, whistleblowers and investigators paint a much darker picture — one of systemic neglect and outright facilitation of trafficking networks.

Wednesday’s remarks capped a week of bold action by the Trump White House. From revoking DEI mandates to slashing bureaucratic waste through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the administration has positioned itself as a reform-first force across every agency.

Kennedy, once a critic of government overreach, now appears fully aligned with Trump’s drive to restore order and accountability. “We are already making America again,” he told the President, signaling deep institutional changes underway at HHS.

With more investigations likely to follow and new data emerging, the full extent of the child trafficking scandal under Biden’s HHS may just be coming to light. If Kennedy’s accusations hold up, the consequences could be politically explosive — and morally damning.