Department of Homeland Security may have lost track of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children

‘ICE has no assurance [they] are safe,’ agency watchdog report finds

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may have lost track of thousands of children who immigrated to the country as unaccompanied minors, imperiling both the children’s safety and the effectiveness of the immigration process, an internal watchdog report found.

Between 2019 and 2023, more than 32,000 unaccompanied minors failed to show up for their immigration court hearings, and ICE was “not able to account” for all of their locations, according to a report from the ICE inspector general’s office.

During that period, more than 448,000 unaccompanied children overall immigrated to the US and were transferred from ICE custody to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the agency responsible for placing them with a sponsor or in foster care.

Once they were handed off to HHS for settlement, ICE couldn’t determine all of these children’s locations, and more than 291,000 of the kids were not placed into removal proceedings because ICE had never served them notices to appear or scheduled a court date for them.

"Without an ability to monitor the location and status of [unaccompanied migrant children], ICE has no assurance [they] are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor," Inspector General Joseph Cuffari wrote in the report.

A Border Patrol agent gives a group of unaccompanied minors water after they were apprehended near the highway on February 4, 2024 outside Eagle Pass, Texas (AFP via Getty Images)

Failure to appear in court can also lead to the children facing deportation orders.

ICE agreed with some of the report’s recommendations to incorporate more automated tracking mechanisms, but argued the watchdog had “misunderstandings about the process.”

“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,” an ICE spokesperson told The Independent.

The agency said in comments on the report that it sometimes delays seeking removal orders to give children time to find legal representation, seek relief from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and to avoid backlogging immigration courts. It also pointed to dedicated field officials who are tasked with resolving issues over unaccompanied minors who don’t show up in immigration court.

“Since last year, ICE has taken steps to automate information sharing related to unaccompanied children’s attendance at immigration court proceedings,” the ICE spokesperson added. “We will continue to improve these procedures and implement the OIG’s recommendations.”

The youth described in the DHS report are separate from the children intentionally split from their families while crossing the border during the Trump years, under that administration’s “zero tolerance” border policy.

The initiative was criticized for unintentionally separating US citizen children from their parents, and officials took years before they were able to reunite families split apart by the policy.

As of late last year, there were 68 children of US citizen parents still separated from their families, and 297 children who are US citizens separated from their non-citizen parents.

As part of a settlement in December, a federal judge barred officials from imposing family separation for the next eight years.