(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The Justice Department has announced charges against a Guatemalan illegal immigrant who lied about being the father of two unaccompanied children. The Biden administration wound up sending the one of the children to live with the Guatemalan as a result of his fraud.
The DOJ charged Luciano Tinuar Quino, also known as “Luciano Tinuar Guino,” 57, a citizen and resident of Guatemala, with two counts of making a false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement.
The charges stem from 2022, when Tinuar Quino submitted applications to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement to obtain custody of two male Guatemalan children.
So Biden's HHS released a child to the custody of a man claiming to be his father who used documents with photoshop *this bad?* 😳
Today, criminal charges. https://t.co/MZqRoKCjCQ pic.twitter.com/dLDg3pw3Bi
— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) May 12, 2025
Tinuar Quino, who unlawfully entered the U.S. in 2016 and resided in the Orange, New Jersey area, allegedly used aliases, presented identity cards of other individuals, and falsely stated he was each child’s father.
As a result of his fraud, the ORR sent one of the children to live with him. The ORR didn’t send the other child to live with him, partly because the application “raised concerns about his identity and relationship with the [child],” the DOJ said in a Monday press release.
Court records show how sloppy Tinuar Quino’s applications were. In one of the applications, he submitted a poorly photoshopped picture of what he said was him and one of the migrant child’s mothers.
Tinuar Quino’s application included a photo-shopped image of him standing next to a floating woman with a partially cropped head and feet. Still, the ORR accepted the application and sent that child to live with the man.
Tinuar Qunio’s alleged fraud represents one of an untold number of incidents where unaccompanied minors were improperly sent to “guardians.” HHS whistleblower disclosures from last year included shocking allegations that the HHS sent at least two unaccompanied migrant children to homes with ties to the El Salvadoran gang, La Mara Salvatrucha, more commonly known as MS-13.
According to a report last August from the DHS Inspector General, ICE has apprehended 448,820 unaccompanied migrant children since 2019.
Once ICE apprehends those children, the agency transfers them to the Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement. The HHS ORR is then supposed to find shelter for those children as they go through immigration court proceedings.
However, more than 32,000 unaccompanied minors have failed to show up to their court dates—and ICE can’t account for all of them, according to the DHS IG’s report from last August. The DHS IG also found that ICE hasn’t served notices for more than 291,000 unaccompanied minors to appear for court—meaning that many of them could be unaccounted for, too.
The Trump administration has said that it aims to account for all the children lost track of under Biden’s rule.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
