Are 300,000 undocumented immigrant children missing in the United States?

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Unaccompanied children detained at the border are first processed by Customs and Border Patrol before being released to other U.S. authorities.

Donald Trump's new border czar Tom Homan says the US government is 'failing to find' more than 300,000 migrant children – and that many of them have been lured into forced labor and sex trafficking .

President-elect Donald Trump and his political allies, including Vice President-elect JD Vance, have repeatedly made similar claims.

Some experts accuse them of distorting statistics by suggesting that children are “lost” and victims of crime, even though there is agreement that some aspects of the system need to be changed.

The new administration has made the fight against immigration a priority, promising to crack down on the U.S.-Mexico border and carry out mass expulsions of undocumented immigrants.

Let's take a look at the claims of missing migrant children.

What are the Trump team's claims?

In an interview with Fox News on November 26 – just before a visit to the US-Mexico border in Texas – Homan accused the Biden administration of “bragging” about how quickly children are being released, as well as ” not properly controlling” adults. sponsors in the United States.

“Shame on them,” he said of the Biden administration. “They have more than 300,000 children that they have released [to] unselected sponsors they can't find.

“Many will be subjected to forced labor. Many will be forced into the sex trade,” Homan added. “We have to save these children.”

During his October debate against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, JD Vance also said that the Department of Homeland Security had “effectively lost” a total of 320,000 migrant children.

Concerns about the plight of migrant children were also brought into sharp focus earlier this week when Texas authorities shared an image of a two-year-old girl from El Salvador found at the border holding a piece of paper with a phone number.

By putting optics above safety, countless children have been put in harm's way or gone missing,” Tennessee Republican Rep. Mark Green told the New York Post.

“This refusal to protect vulnerable foreign children from abuse, exploitation, and human trafficking will be one of the defining failures of the Biden-Harris administration.

Have the children really disappeared?

Immigration experts and lawyers say the allegations stem largely from an August report from the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General, which found that 32,000 unaccompanied minors failed to show up in immigration court hearings between 2019 and 2023.

The report notes that 291,000 migrant children received no judicial notification. He also called on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to “take immediate action to ensure the safety” of unaccompanied migrant children in the United States.

Migrant children “who fail to appear in court are considered to be at higher risk of trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor,” the inspector general’s office reported.

But Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director of the American Immigration Council, a migrant advocacy group, told the BBC that the figures are indicative of a bureaucratic “red tape problem” rather than “something nefarious.” .

“When you hear the phrase 'missing,' you think there's a child that someone is trying to find and can't,” he said.

“That's not the case here. The government has made no effort to find these children.”

Experts say many children may be at the addresses listed in government records but simply were unable to show up for their hearings.

“It doesn’t mean anything bad happened to them,” Mr. Reichlin-Melnick said. “That means you missed a court hearing.”

Mr. Reichlin-Melnick added that there are “legitimate concerns” about exploitation.

“We cannot, however, suggest that these 320,000 children are victims of labor trafficking,” he said.

Eric Ruark, an immigration researcher at NumbersUSA – which calls for stricter border controls – said children are difficult to track “because of a combination of apathy, incompetence and bureaucratic inefficiency.”

“Many, hopefully even most, are safe thanks to caring sponsors,” he added. “But the Biden administration can't really say one way or the other, and apparently doesn't care enough to know.”

What happens to children at the border?

Unaccompanied minors detained at the U.S.-Mexico border go through a complex process that begins with detention and processing by Customs and Border Patrol, or CBP.

If the child is from a foreign country other than Mexico or Canada, he or she is subject to removal proceedings and transferred to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS.

HHS, through its Office of Refugee Resettlement, cares for children within a network of state-approved providers.

The office also seeks to reunite children with family members in the United States or with individual or organizational sponsors — who in turn are required to ensure they arrive for immigration court dates.

What can the Trump administration do?

Homan and other Trump administration officials have so far not provided many details about how they plan to address the issues affecting the detention of undocumented minors.

Several immigration attorneys contacted by the BBC suggested that the administration would likely make it much more difficult for undocumented children to become a “godfather,” even if the godfather is a family member.

In practice, this would mean more undocumented children would be held in detention.

“They could do what the Obama administration did and stop them,” said Alexander Cuic, an immigration attorney and professor at Case Western Reserve University.

The controversial “Remain in Mexico” program could also apply to children, forcing them to wait across the border for the outcome of immigration proceedings.

“I’m not even sure they know what they’re going to do with the kids,” Mr. Cuic said of the Trump administration. “But there is a boundary issue that they are trying to resolve first, and that is the first concern before whether they are going to be tough on children and adults.”

The BBC has contacted Trump's transition team for comment.

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