The federal government has lost track of unaccompanied migrant children who have crossed the border since fiscal year 2019, according to a Tuesday report from the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG).
The DHS OIG report states that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel are unable to track all unaccompanied minors who have crossed the border and been released from the custody of DHS and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) since fiscal year 2019, and that the agency does not know where at least 32,000 of these minors are. The OIG believes unaccompanied minors to be at greater risk of trafficking, forced labor or exploitation than other migrants arriving at the border.
Additionally, the report found that the actual number of minors unaccounted for could be much larger if ICE had put an additional 291,000 unaccompanied minors into removal proceedings. Not undertaking these proceedings increases the chances that ICE loses contact with those unaccompanied minors, thereby reducing the agency’s ability to check and verify their safety.
“[ICE] could not monitor the location and status of all unaccompanied migrant children (UCs) or initiate removal proceedings as needed,” the OIG report states. “During our ongoing audit to assess ICE’s ability to monitor the location and status of UCs who were released or transferred from the custody of [DHS] and [HHS], we learned ICE transferred more than 448,000 UCs to HHS from fiscal years 2019 to 2023. However, ICE was not able to account for the location of all UCs who were released by HHS and did not appear as scheduled in immigration court. ICE reported more than 32,000 UCs failed to appear for their immigration court hearings from FYs 2019 to 2023.”
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As of May 2024, ICE personnel had not given notices to appear in court to more than 291,000 unaccompanied minors, meaning that those children did not have an immigration court date as of then, the watchdog’s report reads.
“ICE is committed to the protection and well-being of children and works closely with U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and other federal partners to fulfill its obligations under law,” an ICE spokesperson said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “While we concur with the Inspector General’s recommendations to improve information sharing within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and externally with HHS, we are concerned that the report’s findings are misleading and may be misconstrued because they fail to acknowledge key facts.”
“In general, ICE does not issue Notices to Appear (NTAs) to unaccompanied children until after they have been placed with sponsors who have been vetted by HHS. This gives them time to get settled in their new surroundings and provides them with an opportunity to consult with legal counsel,” the ICE statement continued. “Unaccompanied children are entitled to certain procedural protections under our laws and, in many cases, may be eligible for immigration relief with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), instead of in the immigration court system. If they are ineligible for relief, USCIS will issue an NTA.”
Additionally, DHS OIG warned in its report that ICE “had limited oversight and guidance for unaccompanied migrant children who fail to appear in court” and “cannot accurately or effectively share court information on unaccompanied migrant children released from DHS and HHS custody.”
The report lays out corrective measures for ICE to pursue in order to alleviate some of the issues at hand, including improved data sharing between federal stakeholders. ICE concurred with the recommended courses of action.
The DHS OIG based its report on a review of ICE data, as well as interviews with more than 100 officials spanning a number of agencies and offices involved in processing unaccompanied minors who cross the border. The OIG’s interviews with those officials also included meetings with  ICE field offices in Miami, Los Angeles, St. Paul (Minnesota), Philadelphia, San Diego, Baltimore, Houston, Dallas, New York, and Chicago.
The DHS and HHS did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to include a statement from ICE.
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