Nick Shirley on Fox: "People made millions upon millions of dollars exploiting children" at the border

Independent journalist Nick Shirley told Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany on "Saturday in America" that migrant children who crossed the southern border were trafficked, exploited and used as decoys, and that "nobody knows where these kids went."

Shirley said some children were sent back by the cartels to the Mexican side "to use as a decoy so another family could get inside the United States because they had children." He called the left's claim to be the party of compassion "so inhumane," adding: "People made millions upon millions of dollars exploiting children."

In the same interview, Shirley said nonprofits were paid hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to move and place unaccompanied children under the prior administration, and that some of those groups have since dissolved. A 2024 DHS inspector general report found ICE could not account for more than 32,000 unaccompanied children who failed to appear in immigration court.