46,000 Unaccounted Migrant Children Who Went Missing Under Biden Have Been Located

Senior federal officials announced Thursday that roughly 146,000 unaccompanied migrant children who entered the United States during the Biden administration and later lost contact with government authorities have now been tracked down, though officials acknowledged that close to 300,000 more remain unaccounted for.

The announcement came during a joint press conference at the Justice Department in Washington, where Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche outlined what they described as a significant acceleration in efforts to locate children who had been released to sponsors with little or no follow-up oversight.

“We found 146,000 kids so far,” Mullin said. “We still have nearly 300,000 missing.”

Mullin said the previous administration permitted roughly 450,000 children to go missing across the country, and that President Trump had made it a priority to find them. The figure represents a dramatic rise from last summer, when officials reported they had located only about 22,000 children.

The children in question entered the country as unaccompanied minors. This means they crossed the southern border without a parent or legal guardian during a period of record-high border crossings.

Under federal law, such children are taken into custody by the Department of Homeland Security and then transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for placing them with sponsors, typically relatives or family acquaintances, while their immigration cases move through the courts.

DHS said the children who have been located were found through home visits and door knocks by investigators.

Critics of the Biden-era system have long argued that inadequate vetting of sponsors left many children vulnerable to exploitation. A DHS report found that children who fail to appear at court hearings may face a heightened risk of trafficking or labor exploitation, though the report stopped short of classifying all children who missed hearings as definitively “missing.”

The announcement Thursday was also accompanied by a separate law enforcement action. The Justice Department charged three individuals in Ohio in connection with an alleged conspiracy to smuggle unaccompanied minors across the U.S. border. Among those charged are Maritza Azucena Cahuec Coc, 38, and her brother Carlos Agustin Cahuec Coc, 33, who prosecutors allege submitted fraudulent sponsorship applications to the Office of Refugee Resettlement as part of a smuggling scheme said to have operated between December 2020 and October 2023.

The scope of the ongoing search raises questions about the federal government’s capacity to monitor the welfare of vulnerable children after they leave official custody, a challenge that advocates, auditors, and lawmakers have flagged across multiple administrations.

Officials have yet to provide a detailed breakdown of where the located children were found or what circumstances they were in at the time of contact.

This article is based on reporting from the June 11, 2026 press conference at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Thank you for your support.

If you appreciate the work we do to spread the good news of Jesus Christ, please consider giving a gift to help us continue this work. Maranatha!