Report: Officials likely lost track of nearly 6,000 migrant children

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration has likely lost track of nearly 6,000 unaccompanied migrant children, thousands more than lawmakers were alerted to last month, according to a McClatchy review of federal data.

Federal officials acknowledged last month that nearly 1,500 unaccompanied minors arrived on the southern border alone without their parents and were placed with sponsors who did not keep in touch with federal officials, but those numbers were only a snapshot of a three-month period during the last fiscal year.

“There is a lot more,” said a field specialist who worked in the Office of Refugee Resettlement until earlier this year and was tasked with reaching out to sponsors and children to check on their well-being. “You can bet that the numbers are higher. It doesn’t really give you a real picture.”

The new estimate comes as backlash widens over President Donald Trump’s’ decision to separate parents and children. Advocates argue the growing numbers of unaccounted children should be expected as families and sponsors become more fearful of federal officials who are now using information from government social workers to run immigration checks and, in some cases, target sponsors—including parents and family members—for removal.

“To the extent that there are problems for protection of unaccompanied children, this will only become worse as they put more kids in the unaccompanied category by ripping them away from their families,” said Clara Long, U.S. researcher at Human Rights Watch.

The revelation that federal officials couldn’t locate more than 1,000 children set off an outcry of concern and promises from the Trump administration to implement stronger vetting procedures of sponsors, including fingerprinting parents and handing their immigration status to Department of Homeland Security officials.

Federal officials said the children were not actually lost, but their sponsors didn’t respond to phone calls checking on them. They emphasized that Office of Refugee Resettlement is no longer legally responsible for the children once they were placed in a sponsor’s custody.

Since 2014, tens of thousands of unaccompanied children have been apprehended during a surge of Salvadoran, Honduran and Guatemalan mothers and children who have flooded the U.S. border fleeing violence and poverty.

Unaccompanied children are generally turned over to the custody of ORR, which will either care for them in a shelter or release them to a family member.