The Trump administration says it has located more than 129,000 migrant children who were reported missing after entering the United States during the Biden administration, following a sweeping review of federal immigration records.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the development Friday, saying federal authorities identified 129,143 unaccompanied migrant children who had lost contact with the immigration system after crossing the border.
“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 children who appeared for required court hearings. Only minors who physically showed up for their immigration proceedings were included in the count.
The source said the effort required extensive cross-agency coordination due to what they described as poor recordkeeping under the previous administration. Officials were forced to comb through data across multiple federal agencies to determine whether the children had interacted with the immigration system at any point.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration said it had located approximately 62,000 missing migrant children, meaning the latest figure represents more than double that total.
Under federal law, unaccompanied migrant children apprehended at the border are transferred from U.S. Border Patrol custody to the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for placing them with sponsors inside the United States while their immigration cases proceed.
During the Biden administration, roughly 500,000 migrant minors entered the country without a parent or legal guardian, according to federal data. Many were released to sponsors through a process that whistleblowers later said involved limited vetting.
Those concerns were echoed in a government watchdog report released last year, which found widespread breakdowns in oversight. The report concluded that approximately 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children were never issued immigration court dates.
An additional 32,000 children who were assigned future court hearings failed to appear, according to the same report, which reviewed cases spanning from October 2018 through September 2023.
Noem said the administration’s review remains ongoing, with federal agencies continuing efforts to locate children whose whereabouts remain unknown.
