An internal watchdog report shows that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has lost tens of thousands of unaccompanied illegal immigrant minors over the past five years under the Trump and Biden administrations.
According to Fox News, a report titled “Management Alert – ICE Cannot Monitor All Unaccompanied Migrant Children Released from DHS and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Custody” that was issued by Inspector General Joseph Cuffari and addressed to ICE Deputy Director Patrick Lechleitner was sent to Congress on Tuesday.
The report claims that during the last five years, 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children (UCs) did not appear for immigration court hearings and were not accounted for by ICE.
“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 the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), we learned ICE transferred more than 448,000 UCs to HHS from fiscal years 2019 to 2023,” the report stated.
“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,” the internal watchdog report added. “ICE reported more than 32,000 UCs failed to appear for their immigration court hearings from FYs 2019 to 2023.”
The report noted that while ICE is responsible for overseeing unaccompanied migrant children throughout the immigration process, the recent investigation found that ICE “cannot always monitor the location and status” of the children after they are released from custody by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services.
The report added, “Even though OPLA issued new guidance to verify the location of UCs who failed to appear for their court hearings and improve coordination with HHS, we found ICE often neither followed this guidance nor issued corresponding guidance for its officers in the field.”
Cuffari warned that without ICE having the ability to monitor both the location and status of unaccompanied migrant children, the agency has no way to make sure they are protected from exploitation, forced labor, and trafficking.
The report indicated that the statistics could be worse than estimated, as roughly 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children have not been marked for removal proceedings due to the agency failing to schedule immigration court dates and provide individuals with notices to appear in court.
