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 to a scandal-scarred sting-op charity. The label stays; the help leaves.
In August 2026, HHS awarded Our Rescue — formerly Operation Underground Railroad — a no-bid contract, notice value $158 million with reported room to $244 million, to provide legal services to unaccompanied migrant children. It is a sting-operation group with no evident expertise in children's legal work, and the award landed a week after the administration let the contract lapse for the roughly 100 nonprofits that actually did the job. This page grades the contract, the defunding, and the cronyism — and is careful about what it does not claim.
What this page is about
Three moves, one direction. The administration stalled a federal grant competition to house and serve human-trafficking victims and is stonewalling the records of why (a Democracy Forward FOIA suit). It let the contract for roughly 100 legal-aid nonprofits — the lawyers for unaccompanied migrant children — expire, after cutting off their pay in a dispute over the children's confidential files. And it handed a no-bid contract worth up to $244 million to Our Rescue, a sting-operation charity with no evident children's-legal expertise, now run by a former ICE official.
Each piece is documented. Together they describe an “anti-trafficking” posture emptied of the services that help trafficking victims, with the money redirected to an administration-tied group. We grade the contract and the defunding as fact, attribute the founder's old allegations as the unproven claims they are, and decline the overreach that this proves anything about the president and child abuse.
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The award and its context, claim by claim
HHS gave Our Rescue a no-bid contract, up to $244 million, for migrant children's legal services.
FACTA notice posted on sam.gov shows the Department of Health and Human Services awarded Our Rescue (formerly Operation Underground Railroad) a no-bid contract to provide legal services to unaccompanied migrant children. The posted value was $158 million, with reporting that funding has room to grow to $244 million; the initial term runs August 7, 2026 to February 6, 2027.
Our Rescue is a sting-operation group with no evident expertise in children's legal services.
FACTOur Rescue says it helps law enforcement run sting operations to catch traffickers. NPR reports it is unclear whether the group even has immigration lawyers on staff, and it has no track record providing legal representation to children. Michael Lukens of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, whose nonprofit did this work under the prior contract, called it 'highly problematic in their history' with 'no expertise in providing legal services to unaccompanied children.'
“Children are going to be harmed and that seems to be the point of a lot of these actions. — Michael Lukens, Amica Center for Immigrant Rights”
The award followed the defunding of the nonprofits that actually did the work.
FACTThe 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, and many continue representing the minors unpaid.
The award fits a pattern of contracts to administration-tied entities.
FACTOur Rescue's current CEO, Derek Benner, was executive director of the Department of Homeland Security'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.
Meanwhile, the grants that house and serve trafficking victims are stalled — and the records are being withheld.
FACTDemocracy Forward sued the administration in a FOIA action for failing to release records about the 'sudden and unexplained indefinite postponement of a federal grant competition to provide housing and victim-centered supportive services to human trafficking victims.' It sits inside a broader pattern: the Justice Department terminated roughly $820 million in public-safety and victim grants in 2025, litigation over which (by Democracy Forward, the Vera Institute, and others) is ongoing.
The administration calls trafficking a top priority; federal prosecutions have hit their slowest pace since 2010.
FACTThe administration has repeatedly said fighting sex trafficking is a top priority. But a Reuters analysis of federal court records found sex-trafficking charges have dropped to their slowest pace since 2010 — the Justice Department charged about 73 people through June 2026, roughly 22% below the prior pace. Reuters and its sources attribute the shortfall in part to the administration's focus on immigration, the departure of agents and prosecutors, and cuts to grants that support trafficking victims. In fairness, the same data shows a longer, decade-long decline in such cases — partly a shift toward more complex, higher-profile prosecutions — so the drop is not this administration's alone. What the record does not show is the promised crackdown.
Our Rescue's founder was removed in 2023 after abuse and trafficking allegations he denies.
SOME SMOKEOur Rescue was founded by Tim Ballard, whose sting work inspired the QAnon-promoted 2023 film Sound of Freedom. Within months of the film, multiple former employees and women accused Ballard of sexual exploitation and trafficking during operations. He has 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.
What the record supports, and what it doesn’t
- Not “the accused runs it.” Tim Ballard was removed in 2023; Our Rescue is now led by a former ICE official. The problem the documents show is a lack of relevant expertise, a crony pattern, and the gutting of real services — not that Ballard personally profits from this contract.
- Not a claim about the president and child abuse. The record here is a no-bid contract to an unqualified, administration-tied group while the services that help trafficking victims are cut. It does not establish, and we do not assert, any connection between the president and child sexual abuse.
- The government’s position, stated. The Office of Refugee Resettlement says it is “committed to ensuring every unaccompanied immigrant child has legal representation,” and that it is also using the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. Critics counter that stop-gap arrangements with unqualified groups are not representation. We report both.
- What is left is damning enough. An “anti-trafficking” brand, a no-bid award to a group with no children's-legal record, the defunding of the nonprofits who did the work, and stalled grants for actual victims. The documents carry it without inflation.
The brand outlives the service
“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 grants that house actual trafficking victims 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.
Questions worth taking seriously
Is this a claim that Tim Ballard is running the migrant-children program?
No. Ballard was removed from Our Rescue in 2023 after allegations he denies and that were never adjudicated. The group is now led by Derek Benner, a former ICE/HSI official. The concern is the organization's lack of children's-legal expertise, the administration ties, and the defunding of the nonprofits that did the work — not Ballard's personal involvement.
Didn't the administration say it's still providing legal representation?
Yes, and we carry that. ORR says it is committed to legal representation for every unaccompanied child and is also using the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants as a stop-gap. Critics, including nonprofits that did the work, argue that short-term deals with unqualified groups are not the same as representation, and that the resulting churn harms children. The dispute is about whether the arrangement is real representation, not whether the contract exists.
If you are named on this page
If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.
This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.
The record
- NPR (Sergio Martínez-Beltrán) — Controversial group wins $158M contract (Aug 12, 2026)
- HHS contract notice — sam.gov (primary)
- Democracy Forward — FOIA suit over the stalled trafficking-victim grant competition
- Vera Institute — challenge to the ~$820M DOJ victim-grant terminations
- Reuters (Insight) — Trump promised a sex-trafficking crackdown; his Justice Department hasn’t delivered (Aug 13, 2026)