BREAKING: Trump Administration Locates Nearly 150,000 Migrant Children

The Trump administration has now located more than 148,000 unaccompanied migrant children who went missing during the Biden administration’s border crisis, according to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. The figure represents a dramatic escalation from earlier in the year and stands as one of the most significant law enforcement accomplishments of Trump’s second term, even as hundreds of thousands of children remain unaccounted for.

Mullin first revealed the scope of the crisis in June, announcing during a joint press conference with then-Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that federal agencies had located 146,000 of the children. “We found 146,000 kids so far. 146,000 kids. We still have nearly 300,000 missing,” Mullin told reporters at Department of Justice headquarters. By August, that number had climbed past 148,000, with DHS vowing to continue the search until every last child is found.

The roots of this crisis trace back to policies enacted during the Biden administration, when hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied minors crossed the southern border and were subsequently released to sponsors with what critics describe as shockingly little vetting. According to a Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report covering fiscal years 2019 through 2023, approximately 448,000 unaccompanied minors were transferred from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody to the Department of Health and Human Services for placement. Of those children, roughly 291,000 were never issued a notice to appear in federal immigration court following their release, and another 32,000 simply never showed up for their scheduled hearings.

Mullin has not minced words in describing what he says happened to many of these children once they disappeared from the government’s radar. “When we start digging into these cases, and you start hearing the absolute horrific things that took place underneath the Biden administration, either true neglect at best and criminal at worst, to allow 450,000 kids to go missing throughout this country,” Mullin said, his frustration evident throughout the June press conference.

The details that have emerged from the recovery effort are difficult to read. Mullin told reporters that investigators are examining reports of children who claim they were raped as many as 600 to 700 times after being placed with so-called sponsors, adults who fraudulently claimed to be family members in order to take custody of migrant minors. “I don’t care who you are,” Mullin said. “I don’t care if you have kids, you don’t have kids. I don’t care if you’re a liberal, you’re independent, you’re a Democrat, you’re Republican. If you can’t stand for law enforcement to go find these kids, who are you? Who are you?”

Investigators say a significant portion of the abuse stemmed from a scheme involving so-called “super sponsors,” individuals who fraudulently claimed custody of multiple unrelated children in order to collect government benefits or, in the worst cases, funnel children into trafficking networks. Acting Attorney General Blanche revealed during the same press conference that federal prosecutors have identified more than 15,500 super sponsor cases currently under investigation. As an initial step, DOJ unsealed charges against three Guatemalan nationals in Ohio accused of conspiring to smuggle unaccompanied minors into the country as part of an international trafficking scheme operating between December 2020 and October 2023.

Blanche did not shy away from describing the human cost of these arrangements. “The criminals calling themselves sponsors trafficked these children to the border, usually committing fraud to do so, and oftentimes the children were abused, assaulted, and certainly exploited,” Blanche said. He noted that some individuals sponsored multiple children at once, which required them to lie repeatedly to government caseworkers and falsify official paperwork claiming familial relationships that did not exist.

As disturbing as the abuse allegations are, Mullin says the recovery effort has also revealed a troubling geographic pattern. He told reporters that a large share of the missing children have turned up in sanctuary cities, jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. “Do you know where we’re finding the most of them? Sanctuary cities,” Mullin said, “because they know they’re safe. That’s why they’re called sanctuary cities.” The comment reignited a long-simmering conservative critique of sanctuary city policies, with supporters of stronger immigration enforcement arguing that such jurisdictions have effectively provided cover for exactly the kind of exploitation now coming to light.

The recovery numbers themselves tell a story of accelerating momentum. As recently as last summer, before this administration ramped up its efforts, only around 22,000 of the missing children had been located. The jump to 146,000 by June, and then past 148,000 by August, represents a massive scaling up of the federal government’s search and rescue capacity, achieved through what officials describe as close coordination between DHS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations, and HHS.

Mullin credited that interagency partnership directly for the pace of recoveries. “Because of our partnership with HHS and DOJ, the Department of Homeland Security is truly using the best of the best,” he said. Officials say children have been located through a combination of standard wellness checks conducted at addresses where minors were originally sent, along with more intensive investigative work when a child’s whereabouts could not immediately be confirmed.