Photo: Alamy
The Trump administration says federal authorities have located more than 129,000 migrant children who were reported missing after entering the United States during the Biden administration.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the findings Friday in a post on X, saying the children were found after “the Biden administration lost them” and warning that “too many … were exploited, trafficked and abused.”
“We will continue to ramp up efforts and will not stop until every last child is found,” Noem said.
According to a federal government source familiar with the operation, officials reviewed immigration court records and data maintained by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to identify the children. Only minors who appeared for their immigration court hearings were included in the total, The Daily Wire reported. The individual spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the operation publicly.
The effort followed what the source described as major gaps in recordkeeping during the Biden administration. “Under the Biden administration, the data was so bad, and our ability to find where these cases went was so bad, we just had to comb through every single agency,” the source noted, adding that a child had to be physically present in court to be counted.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration said it had located about 62,000 missing migrant children, making the latest figure more than double that number.
Under U.S. law, Border Patrol agents are required to transfer unaccompanied migrant children to the Department of Health and Human Services, which works to place them with sponsors already living in the United States. During the Biden administration, roughly 500,000 unaccompanied minors crossed the border, according to federal data.
Whistleblowers have alleged that many children were released to poorly vetted sponsors, some of whom were never required to appear in person. Those concerns were echoed in an inspector general’s report released last year.
The administration says the search for missing children is ongoing as federal agencies continue to review records and locate additional cases.
