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![Tom Homan, President Donald Trump's border czar, seen in this 2018 file photo served as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Trump's first term. (AP)](https://static.politifact.com/CACHE/images/politifact/photos/homan2018/00268fb080c7ea716e48f909508ead82.jpeg)
![Tom Homan, President Donald Trump's border czar, seen in this 2018 file photo served as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Trump's first term. (AP)](https://static.politifact.com/CACHE/images/politifact/photos/homan2018/837450703df7dd7798e86150f2a9854c.jpeg)
Tom Homan, President Donald Trump's border czar, seen in this 2018 file photo served as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Trump's first term. (AP)
If Your Time is short
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An August 2024 Department of Homeland Security inspector general report said about 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children failed to appear for immigration court dates. That includes children from October 2018 through September 2023, which spans two presidential administrations.
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Also, 291,000 more children had not been issued notices to appear in court as of May 2024, the report said.
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The report did not say the children were missing. Experts said describing them that way is misleading.
As President Donald Trump’s administration increased deportation efforts in its first week in office, a Fox News host claimed that federal officials had already found up to 80,000 missing migrant children.
In a Jan. 24 segment about Trump’s deportation efforts, Harris Faulkner, co-host of "Outnumbered," a Fox News talk show, said border czar Tom Homan told her that a "second wave" will focus on what she said was 300,000 missing migrant children.
"That number has started to already come down," Faulkner said. "They’ve found about 75 to 80,000 of those kids already." She said Trump officials had been trying to identify and find those children since the election, adding, "What in the world was (former President Joe) Biden’s administration doing?"
We found multiple social media posts sharing Faulkner’s claim.
Faulkner didn’t return a PolitiFact request seeking more information about her claim. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the White House didn’t, either.
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Faulkner did not say where the 300,000 figure came from, but that number of purported missing children has been cited frequently in conservative media, by politicians and in social media claims since the August 2024 release of a Department of Homeland Security inspector general report on unaccompanied migrant children.
PolitiFact and other news outlets have reported that the figure distorts the report’s federal data by describing the children as "missing."
"It’s not true that 300,000 children are missing. And it’s therefore totally misleading to say that 75,000 to 80,000 of these purportedly missing children have been ‘found,’" Jonathan Beier, the Acacia Center for Justice’s research and evaluation director, wrote to PolitiFact in an email.
The Homeland Security inspector general said in the report that Immigration and Customs Enforcement transferred more than 448,000 unaccompanied migrant children to the Department of Health and Human Services’ custody from October 2018 to September 2023. That includes about two years of Trump’s first presidential term.
The report said that more than 32,000 migrant children failed to appear for scheduled court hearings during that period. Also, 291,000 more children as of May 2024 did not receive a "notice to appear" in court from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, so did not yet have an immigration court date. Together that’s about 323,000 children.
The report does not describe those children as missing, but said children who don’t appear in court are considered "at higher risk for trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor." The 32,000 figure could be higher, the report said, because of the agency’s failure to issue "notices to appear" to 291,000 children.
In an Aug. 6, 2024, letter to Inspector General Joseph Cuffari included in the inspector general report, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement said it agreed with the report’s recommendations to improve information sharing among federal agencies, but noted the report doesn’t acknowledge why notice-to-appear filings are delayed. That may lead to misunderstandings about the process, the agency said. The notices aren’t filed until a child is released to a sponsor, and that interval allows children to seek legal representation and relief before U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the letter said.
The Trump administration appointed Cuffari and the Senate confirmed him in July 2019. He was not among the 18 inspector generals Trump fired Jan. 24. Cuffari’s office did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Beier said the inspector general report focused narrowly on Immigration and Customs Enforcement records kept specifically for overseeing children’s cases in immigration court.
"That one set of records is a far cry from the federal government’s total contact with these children across various agencies," Beier said.
Beier said the report did not mention taking steps to see whether other government records could show what was happening with those children.
For instance, it didn’t report checking whether the children without notices to appear were seeking immigration status through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Nor did it say officials checked with the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review or the Office of Refugee Resettlement, two agencies involved in migrant children’s cases that may have had more information.
Consulting those agencies "would have immediately helped the IG learn more about the children with incomplete ICE records," Beier said, using abbreviations for the inspector general and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
An American Immigration Council spokesperson told PolitiFact the group doesn't know what Faulkner is referring to, but pointed us to a September essay co-written by a staff member that said the inspector general's report "reflects paperwork gaps, not lost children."
Stephanie Canizales, faculty director of the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, said she can't say for certain that migrant children aren't missing in the U.S. But she added that these children may not be at the address the government has listed for them.
"When we use the word 'missing,' it is kind of reminiscent of a kidnapping or disappearance," she said. From her work, it's likely that "children might go administratively missing."
Paperwork may go missing, she said, or children may be released from federal custody to a sponsor who moves.
Canizales said she has not yet seen federal government data that supports Faulkner's statement that 75,000 to 80,000 missing children were found.
If children have been found, they've likely been "administratively found," Canizales said.
Our Sources
Fox News, McEnany: This is who the Democrats are protecting?!, Jan. 24, 2025
Email interview, Jonathan Beier, Acacia Center for Justice director of research and evaluation, Jan. 27, 2025
Phone interview, Stephanie Canizales, faculty director of the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, Jan. 28, 2025
Email exchange, American Immigration Council spokesperson, Jan. 27, 2025
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General, Management Alert - ICE Cannot Monitor All Unaccompanied Migrant Children Released from DHS and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Custody, Aug. 19, 2024
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General, Meet the IG, accessed Jan. 28, 2025
Immigrant Legal Resource Center The Notice to Appear, July 2020
Immigration Impact, Oversight Agency Says 32,000 Unaccompanied Children Are Missing. But Are They?, Sept. 5, 2024
PolitiFact, Trump didn’t say he’ll prosecute Biden officials for 325,000 ‘missing’ kids, nor are they missing, Dec. 5, 2024
Associated Press, FACT FOCUS: Claims that more than 300,000 migrant children are missing lack context
CBS News, Trump claims Biden lost track of over 300,000 migrant children. Here's a fact check.
BBC News, Are 300,000 migrant children missing in the US?
NBC News, Trump fires 18 inspectors general overnight in legally murky move, Jan. 25, 2025