Recently, Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have alleged that hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border are missing. The claim is used, the Associated Press reports, to criticize the border policies of the Biden administration and the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris Ohio Sen. And during Tuesday night's debate, the claim was repeated by JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee. But immigration experts say that the claim strips away significant context, misrepresenting information in an August report published by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General, which faulted Immigration and Customs Enforcement for failing to consistently “monitor the location and status of unaccompanied migrant children” once they are released from federal government custody.
The August report noted that more than 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children had not, as of May 2024, received a notice to appear in court. Also, more than 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children got a notice to appear but then failed to show up for immigration court hearings. Those figures came from ICE and covered October 2018 to September 2023. During that period there were a total of 448,820 unaccompanied children released by ICE to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement. But experts say it is a stretch to refer to roughly 300,000 children as “lost” or “missing.” “This is not a ‘missing kids’ problem; it’s a ‘missing paperwork’ problem,” Jonathan Beier, associate director of research and evaluation for the Acacia Center for Justice’s Unaccompanied Children Program, wrote in an email.
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