Dossier mode
The Trump Admin's Gutting of Victim Services & Questionable Anti-Trafficking Efforts
The same investigation, restaged one beat at a time. Drive it with the arrow keys, space, or autoplay. Nothing is cut from the piece — long runs are split across frames. Read the full investigation or open the Self-Dealing & Crony Capitalism hub.
Anti-trafficking, in name only
Stall the grants that house trafficking victims. Defund the lawyers who represent trafficked kids. Then hand a no-bid contract worth up to $244M to a scandal-scarred sting-op charity. The label stays; the help leaves. The spine is documented — a sam.gov notice, a lapsed nonprofit contract, a FOIA suit.
An “anti-trafficking” contract, emptied of the services that help trafficking victims, with the money redirected to an administration-tied group that has no record of doing the work.
Three moves, one direction: the grants that house victims are stalled behind a records blackout, the ~100 nonprofits who represented the children were defunded, and a no-bid award went to Our Rescue. Each piece is documented and graded FACT. The founder's old allegations are carried as the unproven, denied claims they are — and we decline the overreach that any of this proves something about the president and child abuse.
“Children are going to be harmed and that seems to be the point of a lot of these actions.”
Lukens called Our Rescue 'highly problematic in their history' with 'no expertise in providing legal services to unaccompanied children.' His group is among the roughly 100 nonprofits whose contract the administration let lapse; many keep representing the children unpaid.
HHS gave Our Rescue a no-bid contract — up to $244M — to represent migrant children, though it is unclear the group even employs immigration lawyers.
A sam.gov notice shows the Department of Health and Human Services awarded Our Rescue — formerly Operation Underground Railroad — a no-bid contract for legal services to unaccompanied migrant children. The posted value was $158 million, with reporting that funding has room to $244 million; the initial term runs Aug 7, 2026 to Feb 6, 2027. Our Rescue says it helps law enforcement run sting operations to catch traffickers; NPR reports it is unclear whether it has immigration lawyers on staff, and it has no track record providing legal representation to children.
The reported ceiling of a no-bid contract to a sting-operation charity that may not employ a single immigration attorney — awarded to represent unaccompanied children in immigration court. The notice posted at $158 million with room to grow to $244 million. It is the whole story in one figure: public money for the most vulnerable kids in the system, routed by no competition to a group with no evident ability to do the job.
HHS contract notice, sam.gov; NPR (Aug 12, 2026)
The award landed a week after the administration defunded the ~100 nonprofits that actually did the work.
The Our Rescue contract came a week after the contract for roughly 100 legal-aid nonprofits expired on July 31, 2026, leaving attorneys scrambling to keep representing the children. The administration had stopped paying those nonprofits back in November, after their lawyers refused to hand over confidential information about the children they represented, citing attorney-client privilege. The nonprofits declined to reapply over those concerns; many continue representing the minors unpaid. The experienced providers were cut off first — then the work was handed to a group with no children's-legal record.
The award fits a pattern of contracts to administration-tied entities.
Our Rescue's current CEO, Derek Benner, was executive director of DHS's Homeland Security Investigations during the first Trump administration. Before Our Rescue, the administration announced its intent to award a similar contract, up to $150 million, to Burke Law Group — a small Houston environmental-law firm whose co-founders held first-Trump-administration EPA and Interior posts, and only two of whose 24 attorneys handle immigration. The firm withdrew after NPR and others reported on its ties and lack of experience. The money went where the connections were.
While branding this “anti-trafficking,” the administration stalled the grants that house victims — records withheld — and let federal sex-trafficking prosecutions fall to their slowest pace since 2010.
Democracy Forward sued over the 'sudden and unexplained indefinite postponement' of a federal grant competition to house and serve human-trafficking victims, and the withholding of records explaining why — inside a broader pattern in which DOJ terminated roughly $820 million in public-safety and victim grants in 2025 (litigation ongoing). Meanwhile a Reuters analysis of federal court records found sex-trafficking charges at their slowest pace since 2010: about 73 people charged through June 2026, roughly 22% below the prior pace. In fairness, the same data shows a longer, decade-long decline, so the drop is not this administration's alone — but the promised crackdown is not in the record.
Our Rescue's founder was removed in 2023 after abuse and trafficking allegations he denies — and he does not run the group now.
Our Rescue was founded by Tim Ballard, whose sting work inspired the QAnon-promoted 2023 film Sound of Freedom. Within months, multiple former employees and women accused Ballard of sexual exploitation and trafficking during operations; he repeatedly denied the allegations and was quietly removed from the group in 2023. FACT: the accusations were made and he was removed. SOME SMOKE: the underlying claims themselves, which are unproven and were never adjudicated. He is not the current CEO — which is why the problem here is the contract, not the man.
Where we draw the line — a crony contract and gutted services, not a claim about child abuse.
- A no-bid award, up to $244M, to an unqualified, administration-tied group — landed a week after the experienced nonprofits were defunded, while the grants that house trafficking victims sit frozen behind a records blackout. All graded FACT.
- The government's position, carried: ORR says it is 'committed to ensuring every unaccompanied immigrant child has legal representation' and is also using the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. Critics counter that stop-gaps with unqualified groups are not representation.
- Any connection between the president and child sexual abuse. The record here is self-dealing and gutted services — not that, and we do not claim it.
- That Tim Ballard committed the acts he was accused of. Those allegations are denied and were never adjudicated; he was removed in 2023 and does not run the group. The problem is the contract's lack of expertise and its crony pattern, not his personal involvement.
Whether Our Rescue employs a single immigration attorney to represent the children under this contract is unknown.
Whether Our Rescue has any immigration lawyers on staff, and how it actually intends to represent unaccompanied children, is not established in the public record — NPR reports it is unclear the group has such attorneys at all. Also withheld: what the sealed records show about why the trafficking-victim grant competition was postponed and who ordered it (the subject of the Democracy Forward FOIA suit), and the full ceiling and structure of the award versus the $158M notice.
Help us fill it →Why it matters.
'Anti-trafficking' is one of the few causes with genuinely bipartisan emotional pull — which is exactly what makes it useful as a label to launder a contract through. Strip the branding and the pattern is the plainest kind of self-dealing: public money for vulnerable children routed to an administration-tied group with no track record, while the experienced nonprofits go unpaid and the victim grants sit frozen behind a records blackout. It belongs in the Self-Dealing and Corporate State ledgers for the reason all of these do: the money went where the ties were, and the service the money was for did not follow.
Help us fill these lines.
- OpenDoes Our Rescue have any immigration attorneys on staff, and how does it intend to actually represent children under this contract?
- OpenWhat do the withheld records show about why the trafficking-victim grant competition was postponed, and who ordered it?
- OpenWhat is the full ceiling and structure of the contract — the $244M figure versus the $158M notice?