The U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), in collaboration with federal, state, and local agencies across seven federal judicial districts, conducted a six-week operation that located 200 critically missing children, the Justice Department reports. These children include endangered runaways and those abducted by others. Operation We Will Find You 2 (OWWFY2), the second-of-its-kind nationwide missing child operation, was conducted from May 20 to June 24 and focused on geographical areas with high clusters of critically missing children. Children who go missing may be in serious danger and can be vulnerable to child sex trafficking, abuse, exploitation, and other crimes against children. With assistance from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the effort resulted in the recovery and removal of 123 children from dangerous situations. An additional 77 missing children were located and found to be in safe locations.
Of the 200 children found, 173 were endangered runaways, 25 were considered otherwise missing, one was the victim of a family abduction, and one was a non-family abduction. The youngest child recovered was five months old. Fourteen of the children were found outside the city where they went missing. Of the missing children recovered, 57% were recovered within seven days of the USMS assisting with the case. The operation was conducted from the following locations: the District of Arizona; Eastern District of California; Southern District of Florida; the Western District of Michigan; Eastern District of North Carolina; Southern and Eastern Districts of New York; and District of Oregon. The goal was to highlight partnerships among government and non-government agencies to develop a multi-disciplinary team whose focus was to pull together resources to find critically missing children and to bring more attention to the epidemic of missing children. “Operation We Will Find You is a shining example of the results we can achieve when we unite in our mission to find missing children,” said Michelle DeLaune of NCMEC.