Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cannot always monitor the status and location of unaccompanied immigrant children (UCs) in the United States, according to a new inspector general report. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general described the issue as urgent and pointed out a number of problems that are contributing to these children being unaccounted for.
Under U.S. law, unaccompanied children are defined as immigrants in the country unlawfully who are under the age of 18 and have no parent or legal guardian in the U.S. to provide care and custody.
“ICE must take immediate action to ensure the safety of UCs residing in the United States,” the inspector general stated.
The report focused on children released from DHS and Health and Human Services (HHS) custody.
The findings were part of an ongoing audit that revealed ICE transferred 448,000 unaccompanied children to HHS custody from 2019 to 2023. Once they were released from HHS, 32,000 of them failed to appear at their immigration court hearing, and ICE never served a notice to appear in court to 291,000.
“Based on our audit work and according to ICE officials, UCs who do not appear for court are considered at higher risk for trafficking, exploitation or forced labor,” the inspector general added.
HHS is responsible for the care and custody of the children. The inspector general discovered ICE did not always inform the department of their failure to appear. In addition, the inspector general visited eight ICE field offices, only one of which said it attempted to locate the children after they didn’t show up in court.
The inspector general attributed this failure to a lack of an automated information sharing process between offices and ICE’s limited oversight for monitoring UCs. Currently, ICE has no formal policy or process for checking on children who fail to appear.
The inspector general made two recommendations. First, senior officials at ICE must find funding and implement an automated information sharing system. Secondly, ICE should implement a formal process to identify unaccompanied children who fail to appear and share that information both within ICE and with HHS.
The inspector general said ICE has already submitted a plan to implement the second recommendation, but the first recommendation was unresolved.
