President Donald Trump’s administration reported last week the location of over 23,000 unaccompanied migrant children that the Biden administration could not find.
That’s about seven percent of the children the Biden administration could not locate.
Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, accused the Biden administration of not looking for the “lost” children, a figure that bureaucrats estimate swelled to 300,000 under the last administration.
“The last administration wasn’t even looking for them,” said Homan. “We’re not going to stop until we find every one of them.”
Homan went on to add that their administration is prioritizing its resources on so-called “sanctuary cities” like Chicago, Illinois: municipalities that either formally or informally harbor illegal immigrants by limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
.@RealTomHoman says the Trump Administration has "located over 23,000" unaccompanied children that were lost under Biden:
"We're not going to stop until we find every one of them." pic.twitter.com/Ze4U8MMk04
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) August 29, 2025
Biden’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) reported it was unable to reach about 85,000 unaccompanied children by phone after release to their sponsor from January to May of 2023, per a 2023 report from the New York Times. Last August, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of the Inspector General estimated that about 300,000 unaccompanied children remain unaccounted for.
DHS reported that ICE couldn’t monitor the location and status of unaccompanied children released from DHS and HHS custody. ICE reported that over 32,000 unaccompanied children failed to appear for immigration court hearings from the 2019 to 2023 fiscal years. Over 31,000 unaccompanied children were released to sponsors without valid addresses: blank, undeliverable, or missing apartment numbers.
DHS also reported that ICE: continually failed to inform ORR when unaccompanied children failed to appear in court, failed to develop a policy for following up on unaccompanied children who didn’t appear in court, and failed to serve a Notice to Appear on all unaccompanied children after release from custody. As of May 2024, ICE didn’t serve a Notice to Appear on over 291,000 unaccompanied children — therefore, they don’t have a court date.
DHS reported that the unaccompanied children who failed to appear in court had likely fallen prey to trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.
In March, DHS OIG again reported that ICE can’t effectively monitor the location and status of all unaccompanied children following federal custody.
In May, the Trump administration announced welfare checks of the estimated 450,000 unaccompanied children who entered the country under his predecessor. By the next month, status reports showed about 500 children were taken into government custody due to either unsafe living conditions or immigration enforcement actions against the sponsors.
The Homeland Security Committee held a hearing last November on the unaccompanied children. During that hearing, congressional leaders discussed the breakdown in government processing under the Biden administration that resulted in the vanishing of unaccompanied children.
The policy changes under this new administration have already yielded significant changes in illegal immigration management beyond the recovery of lost unaccompanied children.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration reported less than 5,000 total apprehensions along the southern border for the entire month of July — the lowest recorded number in history — and zero releases. Comparatively, the Biden administration was handling over 10,000 apprehensions a day.
THE TRUMP EFFECT BREAKS YET ANOTHER HISTORIC RECORD. In the month of July 2025 the Border Patrol recorded a total of 4,598 total apprehensions on our 2000 mile plus southern border. That is the lowest number ever recorded – EVER. And ZERO releases. Compare that total of 4,598…
— Thomas D. Homan (@RealTomHoman) August 1, 2025
This is one of those dirty little secrets about the Biden Administration’s immigration policy. Biden released many thousands of minor children into the country then promptly lost contact with them. They probability that many of those children would end up in harmful situations is very high. The administration moved heaven and earth to get them into the country then abandoned them to the “tender mercies” of the human trafficking trade. That is one of Biden’s real legacies.
It is time to find them and ship them back to their respective governments with a fat bill to be paid for their upkeep.