U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has lost track of tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors over the last five years.
An internal watchdog within the Department of Homeland Security sent a report to Congress on Tuesday titled “Management Alert – ICE Cannot Monitor All Unaccompanied Migrant Children Released from DHS and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Custody.”
The interim report warns that over the past five years, more than 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children [UCs] are no longer accounted for by ICE.
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The inspector general report said ICE could not account for all migrant kids released by the Department of Health and Human Services. (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
“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 internal watchdog reported. “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.”
A large portion of these unaccounted migrant children is a consequence of individuals failing to appear at immigration court hearings after being released from government custody.
FILE – A migrant carries his ICE paperwork after being dropped off at a church serving as a shelter for migrants who are seeking asylum, after they were released by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, on May 19, 2019 in El Paso, Texas. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
“Despite its responsibilities for overseeing UCs [unaccompanied migrant children] through the immigration process, we found ICE cannot always monitor the location and status of UCs once they were released from DHS and HHS custody,” the report states.
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“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,” the report continued.
The report was issued by Inspector General Joseph Cuffari and addressed to Patrick Lechleitner, ICE Deputy Director and Senior Official.
A group of migrants traveling from Texas exit a bus in the West Loop neighborhood on Dec. 5, 2023, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
The numbers could be even worse than documented — according to the watchdog’s findings, approximately 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children have not yet been marked for removal proceedings because ICE has routinely failed to schedule immigration court dates and serve notices.
The DHS and ICE have come under intense scrutiny in recent years as inability to manage the influx of migrants from South America has led to individuals slipping through the cracks.