A recent Department of Homeland Security (DHS) investigation concluded Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lost track of at least 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children between 2019 and 2023.

“ICE cannot always monitor the location and status of unaccompanied migrant children who are released from DHS and HHS custody,” the deeply troubling report reads, identifying several organizational failures preventing ICE from locating minors who miss their immigration court dates.

Skipping these hearings makes minors more vulnerable to trafficking, exploitation and debt bondage.

The safety of unaccompanied migrant children relies on seamless communication between no less than three government agencies, and a seemingly endless variety of subdepartments.

The kids start in DHS or ICE custody, depending on where they are first apprehended.

DHS and ICE transfer custody to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) when minors leave detention. HHS is responsible for placing the child with an American sponsor while they await an immigration hearing.

Though HHS has custody of unaccompanied minors until they turn 18, ICE moves them through immigration court. A key part of this job is scheduling immigration hearings and issuing minors notices to appear in court.

These hearings act as pseudo-welfare checks in a system where immigration officials rarely — if ever — see the children they are protecting. The DHS report notes that ICE staff at these hearings “may be the only ICE officials [unaccompanied migrant children] ever see in person.”

That’s why ICE is also supposed to inform HHS when a child fails to show up for court.

The DHS investigation found multiple failures of communication within ICE leading to the functional disappearance of tens of thousands of vulnerable minors.

ICE transferred custody of more than 448,000 unaccompanied migrant children to HHS between 2019 and 2023. More than 32,000 of these never showed up to court — meaning ICE no longer knows where they are or if they are okay.

Shockingly, the investigation found:

ICE did not inform HHS every time a child missed a court date. It reportedly has no automated way to share this information internally or with other organizations.

When surveyed, ICE officers didn’t always know what information they should communicate to HHS. Each of the organization’s ten field offices had established independent methods of flagging at-risk kids.

It’s difficult to visualize the effective disappearance of more than 30,000 children — but the DHS says the number could be “much larger.”

As of May 2024, more than 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children have never received a notice from ICE to appear in court. In other words, ICE never scheduled physical check-ins with these kids. It doesn’t know where they are or if they are okay.

In a scathing letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and ICE Director Patrick Lechleitner, Senator Marsha Blackburn (TN) wrote of the missing children: “I find this discrepancy unacceptable, and your dereliction of duty has placed these precious children in harm’s way.”

She’s right. By the report’s own admission, unaccompanied minors who do not appear in court “are considered at higher risk for trafficking, exploitation [and] forced labor.”

The number of unaccompanied minors entering the U.S. illegally spiked in 2021 as children fled post-pandemic poverty in Central and South America. These desperate and vulnerable arrivals increasingly end up working dangerous and taxing jobs — sometimes at the behest of their American sponsors.

“It’s getting to be a business for some of these sponsors,” a former HHS caseworker told The New York Times in 2023, referring to people who charge their young guests exorbitant fees for a place to stay. This is illegal, but the massive influx of children often prevents HHS from investigating accusations of abuse.

“In interviews with more than 60 [HHS] caseworkers,” the the Times’ 2023 expose on migrant child labor reads, “most independently estimated that about two-thirds of all unaccompanied migrant children ended up working full time.”

The piece uncovered kids as young as 12 working in slaughterhouses, industrial bakeries, construction, roofing and commercial laundries.

But homegrown debt bondage is far from unaccompanied migrant children’s only obstacle. Criminal organizations like Tren de Aragua, a violent Venezuelan prison gang establishing footholds in the U.S., follow desperate migrants looking for victims and recruits.

An ICE spokesperson told Fox that it waits to schedule court dates until the child has been placed with a sponsor and  consulted all their legal options. If a child seeks remedy through another agency, ICE may never issue a court date, because the case has effectively moved out of immigration court.

It’s worth noting that, while the DHS report suggests ICE suffers from egregious procedural and communication failures, the U.S. government’s failure to monitor unaccompanied migrant children is a multi-organizational problem.

HHS, for instance, is supposed to contact minors once they’ve lived with their sponsor for a month. Between 2021 and 2023, the Times found HHS was “unable to contact” 85,000 minors this way.

“Overall,” the outlet writes, “the agency lost immediate contact with a third of migrant children.”

When questioned, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said he wasn’t aware of the Times’ findings and that they “didn’t sound at all realistic.”

America’s immigration system is putting tens of thousands of already vulnerable children in dangerous situations. Part of the problem has to do with the way government agencies share responsibility and communicate with one another. Another part of the problem is the sheer volume of people entering the country every day.

To fix these problems, legislators need to prioritize internal reforms and limit immigration to a level our systems can sustain. Until then, children will continue slipping through the cracks.

Christians like you and I can influence policy priorities through our vote. This election season, please carefully and prayerfully consider which policies best address these problems.

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