President Donald Trump has made striking claims about the fate of hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children who entered the United States during the Biden administration. These statements have sparked debate among immigration experts and politicians about what actually happened to these children and whether they can truly be considered “missing.”
The numbers come from a Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report released in August 2024. The report found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement failed to serve court notices to 291,000 unaccompanied children between October 2018 and May 2024. Another 32,000 children failed to appear for their immigration court dates during this period. However, the report covered both the Trump and Biden administrations, with roughly half occurring under each president.
