US Authorities Lose 30,000 Migrant Children

A recent audit by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General uncovered that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) failed to monitor over 30,000 unaccompanied migrant children after their release from government custody.
“ICE has no assurance UCs (unaccompanied migrant children) are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor,” Inspector General Joseph Cuffari’s report warned.
The audit showed that between 2019 and 2023, ICE transferred over 448,000 unaccompanied children to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The agency struggled to monitor the whereabouts of many of these children after their release from HHS custody. More than 32,000 children failed to appear for scheduled immigration court hearings in the period, and ICE couldn’t account for their location.
The report also states that the number of missing children could be higher due to ICE’s failure to serve Notices to Appear (NTAs) on 291,000 children, leaving them without scheduled court dates and outside the formal immigration process.
Illegal immigration has long been high up on the list of important issues in the United States. Coping with the huge numbers of people crossing the U.S. border, particularly in the South is one of the hottest topics for voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Cuffari’s office found that ICE’s problems are rooted in systemic issues, including resource limitations and a lack of automated processes for sharing critical information both internally and externally with HHS and the Department of Justice (DOJ).
“ICE does not have an automated process for sharing information internally between the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA) and Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), and externally with stakeholders.” This gap has left ICE relying on “manual, multi-step processes,” which have proven ineffective.
According to the report, even after new guidance was issued by OPLA in December 2023 to address these issues, ICE did very little to ensure their field offices started to handle these cases. Cuffari claims that at one field office, only a single officer out of eight attempted to locate missing children.
Cuffari added that ICE did start “a new formal process” to find these children as per his recommendation and his office is now waiting for proof that ICE’s new process has been put into action.
ICE’s response was included in the report. According to the response, they are now looking into implementing some automation changes. “Once identified, options will be briefed to ICE leadership to decide whether to pursue implementing an automated system given competing mission priorities and demands, as well as the availability of resources and funding,” ICE said in the report.
ICE declined to comment to Newsweek.
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