ICE lost track of tens of thousands of migrant kids, inspector general says

The government’s deportation agency lost track of tens of thousands of illegal immigrant children who were released into communities and disappeared, the agency’s inspector general reported Thursday.

Indeed, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement hasn’t even been able to serve deportation notices on a majority of the kids, leaving them in a legal limbo.

And of the ones who were served deportation notices, 20% of them never bothered to show up for their hearings, Homeland Security’s inspector general said in a scorching new report that said ICE “cannot effectively monitor the location and status of all unaccompanied alien children.”

“Without an ability to monitor the location and status of UACs, ICE is unable to facilitate court appearances and has no assurance UACs are safe from trafficking, exploitation, forced labor, or involvement in criminal activities that may pose a risk to local communities,” the inspector general said.

The problem, investigators said, is that ICE has been overwhelmed by the numbers and has been getting bad data from Health and Human Services, which shares legal responsibility for the kids, depending on where they are in the process.

That made it easy for the kids to fall through the cracks.

The kids have long been the toughest of immigration cases, and their numbers soared after President Biden relaxed border controls in 2021.

One ICE field office said each of its officers managed 30,000 cases a year, meaning they could devote just 3 minutes per case per year.

That made it difficult to follow up with the children and to serve them their deportation case documents, formally known as a notice to appear or NTA.

UACs are juveniles who arrive at the border without parents. Because of a quirk in the law, if they are from Canada and Mexico, they can be quickly repatriated. But if they are from further afield, they must be quickly released to HHS, which holds them in shelters and then seeks sponsors to take them in while their immigration cases are moving along.

Previous audits have found HHS lost track of many of the kids once it released them to sponsors, and Thursday’s report says ICE — which is supposed to be tracking them during their immigration cases — also struggles to keep tabs.

Out of 448,000 UACs that entered from 2019 through 2023, ICE failed to serve NTAs on 233,000 as of the start of this year.

In more than 30,000 cases, ICE doesn’t even have an address where the children were supposed to be because HHS left that information blank.

ICE, in its official response to the report, pointed fingers at HHS, saying it has chief oversight of the kids once they are released from immigration custody.

ICE Chief Financial Officer Jennifer Cleary said the agency is “committed to strengthening” its “coordination” with other agencies.