Trump’s Border Czar to Prioritize Locating 300,000 Unaccounted-For Children

Then-acting ICE Director Tom Homan speaks at an event hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies, on June 5, 2018. Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times

President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming border czar said he would prioritize locating or rescuing 300,000 unaccounted-for children who entered the United States as illegal immigrants and are at risk of exploitation.

“The third rail is we got over 300,000 missing children,” Tom Homan told Fox News on Nov. 18, likely referring to a government report issued earlier this year. “Over half a million children have been trafficked into the United States. This administration released them to unvetted sponsors, and they can’t find 300,000. And based on three-and-a-half decades, some of these children are in forced labor.”

Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general released a report finding that 323,000 illegal immigrant children are unaccounted for inside the United States. As of May 2024, more than 32,000 children who were served notices to appear in court did not appear, while the safety of an additional 291,000 could not be verified because they were not placed into removal proceedings, making monitoring their status challenging, according to the report.

Those figures came from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and covered the period from October 2018 to September 2023.

“We already found some in forced labor, some of them are in for sex trafficking, some of them are with pedophiles,” Homan said. “We need to save these children. That’s going to be the third rail.”

The DHS report noted that ICE, which Homan had overseen under the first Trump administration, should “take immediate action” to ensure those unaccounted-for children are safe.

Two other priorities, or “rails,” Homan said, are to secure the U.S.–Mexico border as well as deport illegal aliens who are criminals and “national security threats” still residing in the United States.

Both Homan and Trump have said they will initiate a wide-ranging mass deportation plan after the president-elect takes office on Jan. 20, 2025. Trump said on Nov. 18 that he would be prepared to declare a national emergency to move things forward.

Some pro-immigration groups and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have said they are opposed to Trump’s deportation proposals, and the ACLU has signaled it will file lawsuits to block such plans.

On Nov. 18, the ACLU said it sued ICE to seek records on how “privately chartered deportation flights run by ICE ... could be expanded to carry out a mass deportation and detention program.”

What DHS Report Says

The DHS inspector general said in the August report that unaccounted-for children who don’t show up for immigration court dates can be “considered at higher risk for trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.”

The office faulted ICE for failing to consistently “monitor the location and status of unaccompanied migrant children” once they are released from federal government custody.

During the period from October 2018 to September 2023, 448,820 unaccompanied children were released by ICE to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement.

The U.S. government defines an unaccompanied migrant child as someone under 18 who lacks lawful immigration status and has no parent or guardian in the country to take custody of them. When they’re apprehended by DHS, they’re transferred to the HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement.

ICE and the Department of Justice may initiate removal proceedings. However, some children are able to stay in the United States legally if they qualify for asylum, special visas for victims of abuse, trafficking, or other crimes, or for other types of immigration relief. In those cases, removal proceedings may never start.

By some estimates, there are around 11 million illegal immigrants who currently live in the United States, some being able to do so under temporary protected status orders issued by DHS.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.