DHS and DOJ push “missing kids” hunt amid lawsuits

sponsor re-vetting – Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the administration is searching for about 300,000 “missing” unaccompanied immigrant children from the Biden era. But attorneys and families contest the premise and argue

On Thursday. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche held a press conference with a simple message: the government says it lost track of about 300. 000 unaccompanied immigrant children who entered the country alone during the Biden administration. were apprehended. and then quickly released to sponsors—typically adult relatives.

Mullin and Blanche told reporters the Biden administration failed to ensure the children were truly living with the people claiming to be family. Mullin said “kids now have been paying for it. ” adding that they “have been getting raped over and over and over again” because the previous administration “chose not to enforce our nation’s laws and protect the most vulnerable.”.

The administration’s framing has already been “thoroughly and repeatedly debunked,” according to the account presented by attorneys involved in cases for unaccompanied minors. Yet Trump officials have continued to use the “300,000 missing” narrative as justification to locate the children.

In practice, officials say they have gotten back in touch with nearly 150,000 of the children. That includes reaching them by phone calls, by visiting their homes, or by encountering them in the community. Still. hundreds of children have been re-detained. and their sponsors are required to be re-vetted before the children can be released again.

For at least some children, the government’s effort is not about rescue. “It is not right that I have to stay here for so long when I have someone to take care of me who knows me and loves me,” one child told the court in a lawsuit described in the filings.

Mullin said at the press conference that the administration is determined to “rescue as many kids as we possibly can.” There are. the reporting notes. horrific cases that have fueled urgency—such as the press conference being pegged to the indictment of three people who allegedly lied about their identities to gain custody of minors. and a fourth man who was sentenced for raping a girl in his care.

But lawyers who work with unaccompanied children say fake-sponsor abuse is relatively rare. and that most sponsors are in fact who they say they are: family members. They argue that the Trump approach. rather than saving children. is separating them from relatives and keeping them in detention for months.

Jessica Richardson. an attorney whose nonprofit. The Door. works with detained children in New York. says the time gap between government custody and reunification has become the key difference. Under Biden. she said. unaccompanied minors taken into custody at the end of that administration were held by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) for about 37 days on average. Under the Trump administration. she said the average is about six months. and that many children have been detained more than a year.

Richardson also argues that “a majority of the kids in our facilities today have biological parents who want them home, and there’s no reason the government shouldn’t be releasing them.”

Jen Smyers. who served as ORR’s deputy director under Biden. framed the stakes more sharply: “DHS is kidnapping people’s kids. ” she said. arguing that while family separation drew public attention during the first Trump administration. the current effort has not been treated with the same seriousness.

At the press conference, Angie Salazar, Trump’s acting ORR director, emphasized more stringent sponsor-vetting requirements. Families. Salazar said. must jump through many more hoops than before to prove they should be allowed to get their children back. The process. she said. “should mirror the standards of the American foster care system. ” including “rigorous background checks. vetting of caregivers. financial stability verification. and home visits before a child is turned over.”.

Families now suing the government argue the added requirements are driving detention far longer than permitted. Several families are challenging the new rules. saying they violate the Flores agreement—a court settlement requiring children in government care be released “without unnecessary delay.” The complaints point to prolonged separation from family. friends. school. and community.

One complaint filed by Democracy Forward and the National Center for Youth Law says these children have been “forced to spend extremely long periods of time away from their family. friends. school and community without justification.” It describes how the delays land hardest on children who cannot make sense of the system: “It’s incredibly stressful and confusing. especially for the little ones. They don’t understand why they can’t get out.”.

The legal fight also invokes federal law. The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act requires ORR to “promptly” place unaccompanied minors “in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child.”

In the same lawsuits described in the reporting. attorneys say the barriers now facing sponsor reunification are so significant that reunification in practice rarely happens. Michigan-based attorney Ana Raquel Devereaux. who works with unaccompanied minors. said under Biden. parents could “receive the child in a relatively swift manner.” Now. she said. “the barriers to sponsor reunification are so significant that. from our perspective. sponsor reunification is essentially nonexistent.”.

Salazar defended the approach at the press conference. saying ORR is “prioritizing child safety over placement speed.” But multiple attorneys dispute the idea that extended detention is protective. Richardson calls ORR facilities “essentially prisons. ” saying children are confined to scheduled routines such as specific times to shower. use the bathroom. and get food.

Smyers, the former ORR official, said ORR is meant to be “a very, very short-term place for unaccompanied children.” She points to the consequences of long stays, including suicidal ideation, depression, and anxiety, as well as children acting out or running away.

For some plaintiffs. detention isn’t just a statistic—it interrupts daily life in ways families say undermine the purpose of custody in the first place. Diego N. a 14-year-old who had been living with his father in Texas. is described in the complaint as having “little privacy” after being re-detained. He misses “being able to go outside for fresh air when he wants to and being able to talk to his friends. ” the filing says. His schooling has also been disrupted: ORR classes. as described in the complaint. focus largely on basic language skills—“He is being taught how to name fruits in English when he should be a freshman at his public high school.”.

Younger children, according to attorney Alexa Sendukas in Texas, often cannot understand why they remain detained. “It’s incredibly stressful and confusing, especially for the little ones. They don’t understand why they can’t get out.”

Sendukas says the administration’s approach uses children “as bait.” She points to a change introduced last year. when ORR began requiring sponsors to attend in-person meetings to verify their identification documents. In her account. sponsors are sometimes met with ICE arrests when they show up. and she says. “We’re seeing family members detained.” She also notes that this week. federal agents raided the offices of organizations that provide legal services to unaccompanied minors. to gather more information.

The fear of additional enforcement appears to be altering children’s decisions. Mario C. a 17-year-old plaintiff described as detained for months. says he wants to live with his mother but has been considering foster care instead because he doesn’t want her to be arrested. Other children. according to the reporting. are so desperate to escape detention that they self-deport—returning to countries they have not lived in for years. even as their parents remain in the United States.

Trump officials, the reporting says, remember the public outrage that followed the border-era family separations in 2017. Now they are. officials described here. separating families inside the country and holding press conferences about saving missing children to make the policy easier for the public to accept.

Even with new language, the reporting says, it remains the same underlying outcome: “family separation is still just family separation.”

DHS DOJ Markwayne Mullin Todd Blanche Office of Refugee Resettlement ORR unaccompanied minors Flores agreement sponsor reunification detention lawsuits