An internal watchdog within the Department of Homeland Security released a report on Tuesday revealing that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has lost track of tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors over the past several years.
The report which was sent to Congress, titled “Management Alert – ICE Cannot Monitor All Unaccompanied Migrant Children Released from DHS and US Department of Health and Human Services’ Custody,” was issued by Inspector General Joseph Cuffari and addressed to Patrick Lechleitner, ICE Deputy Director and Senior Official. It highlighted that over the past five years, ICE has been unable to account for more than 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children.
“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 US 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 said. “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 significant portion of these children remain unaccounted for due to their failure to appear at immigration court hearings after being released from custody and assigned a court date. According to ABC News, when unaccompanied migrant children fail to appear to court, federal judges will postpone the hearings for months until they eventually have no choice but to issue deportation orders.
The report further noted, “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.”
