Undocumented Minors

The kids were here the whole time

DHS says it has located 146,000 of the 450,000 migrant children who vanished from federal view under the Biden administration. The largest concentrations are turning up in sanctuary cities, New York among them. The paper trail was sitting in an Inspector General report the whole time.

Gene Goodwin

Gene Goodwin

— 2 min read
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The kids were here the whole time

DHS says it has located 146,000 of the 450,000 migrant children who vanished from federal view under Biden. The largest concentrations turned up in sanctuary cities, New York among them.

The number is 450,000. It deserves a second to sit with. That is roughly the population of Staten Island minus the parts that vote, an entire mid-sized American city of children who crossed the border alone, passed through federal custody, and then dropped out of the government's field of vision entirely.

On Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stood at a podium in Washington and said the Trump administration has found 146,000 of them. Nearly 300,000 remain unaccounted for. And the places where investigators are locating the most children, Mullin said, are sanctuary cities. New York. Chicago. Los Angeles. The jurisdictions whose official policy is to not pick up the phone when the federal government calls.

The numbers

Unaccompanied minors, FY2019-2023448,000+
Never issued court notices291,000
No-shows at scheduled hearings32,000
Located as of June 2026146,000
Still unaccounted for~300,000

The paper trail predates the press conference by two years. An August 2024 DHS Inspector General report found that between fiscal years 2019 and 2023, more than 448,000 unaccompanied minors moved through ICE custody into the Department of Health and Human Services, which placed them with domestic sponsors. Of those, 291,000 were never issued notices to appear in immigration court. Another 32,000 got the notice and never showed.

No court date means no docket entry, no address of record, no judge asking where the child is. The system did not lose these kids. It declined to look for them.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, at the same press conference, announced charges against three Guatemalan nationals in Ohio who allegedly submitted false information to become sponsors and collect payouts. Mullin said investigators are working reports of children claiming they were raped 600 to 700 times.

For New York, the story is not abstract. The city's sanctuary framework means a federal effort to locate a missing child placed with an unvetted sponsor in Queens runs into the same wall as a deportation action. The policy does not distinguish.

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