Hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied minors—illegal immigrants—are missing.

In August, the Inspector General of Homeland Security released a report that outlines his office’s findings about the handling of unaccompanied minor children (not yet 18) who were apprehended at the border.

The investigation covered fiscal years 2019 to 2023. These are the numbers:

The numbers for the fiscal year 2024 are not available yet since it runs from October 1, 2023, to September 30, 2024.

Of the 448,820 we know about, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a Homeland Security Agency, has been unable to serve 291,000 of them Notices to Appear in court because they do not know where they are.

In addition, 32,000 of them who previously were served notices did not appear for their court date.

What this means is that ICE has no idea where any of these 323,000 children are located.

Homeland Security lost track of them.

The way these minors are handled is somewhat confusing. Most of the unaccompanied minors, like most of the people who illegally enter the U.S., are assisted in their entry by cartel traffickers.

Border Patrol agents encounter these minors, who generally arrive with a group of others, mostly adults. The unaccompanied minors are separated out and housed separately from adults.

At this point, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) takes control of the children. The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is under HHS’s Administration for Children and Families, finds placements for the children and arranges for their transportation.

If the child has a U.S. sponsor—usually a parent, relative or other guardian—the ORR will send the child to that person. However, various investigations have determined that ORR has not done a very good job of confirming the relationship of the minor to the sponsor.

If the child does not have a US sponsor, ORR will find the child a foster placement somewhere in the United States. In reality, it is not ORR that provides these services. ORR contracts with a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) to arrange care, transportation, and placement for these children. The ORR bureaucrat overseeing the placements simply checks boxes, moves paper, authorizes payments, etc.

According to the most recent documentation available from the DHS Administration for Children and Families FY 2023 report on the Justification of Estimates for the Appropriations Committees, managing unaccompanied minors cost U.S. taxpayers $5 billion for FY 2023, down from $5.4 billion in 2022.

This shows that HHS spent $42,500 per unaccompanied minor in FY 2022 ($5.4 billion divided by 127,057) and $41,600 in FY 2023 ($4.9 billion divided by 117,789).

Once the children are moved in with sponsors or foster families, it appears the costs come from some other budget. I have no idea how much it costs from that point on. For what?

Of the almost 450,000 unaccompanied minors encountered by our border agents in the last five fiscal years, we have lost track of over 300,000 of them. It has cost us almost $20 billion to process them.

So why are so many being lost? It appears to be a combination of incompetence and indifference.

If you talk to almost any elected official or government bureaucrat, they will say they “care about the children,” and “children are our future.” Yet there seems to be a distinct disinterest in fixing this issue with the unaccompanied minors. It is a relatively small problem in the overall scheme of things. But the government’s failure has a profound impact on each one of these children.

Many of these children were trafficked for labor and or sex.

Government officials know this.

Despite knowing the situation, our government bureaucrats fail to adequately vet sponsors, secure proof that people who claim they are relatives really are, and oversee the operations of the NGOs properly. Worse still, these bureaucrats and elected officials have allowed these children to become lost by the hundreds of thousands.

The DHS Office of Inspector General is not any better. Their report on the investigation of the mishandling of the unaccompanied minors is only thirteen pages long, not counting the cover and last page. You can barely name the agencies, offices, numbers, and the involvement of each in 13 pages.

This whole situation is reprehensible. Imagine if a parent had four children and three of them disappeared. Wouldn’t you expect the parents to look for them? Wouldn’t you question how and why that happened? Wouldn’t you suspect that those parents are negligent? Our government and all involved in taking care of these children are acting in place of the parents.

What does this say about them all?

It’s not just the government bureaucrats, either.

What’s up with the NGOs, the supposed charities with golden motives, promoting kindness, love, and generosity? They are making more money off the movement and placement of these children than the cartels—$5 billion last year, at least. The purported altruistic motives of these NGOs seem to be driven more by a quest for financial gain than caring for the children.

Cartel traffickers reportedly are paid between $6,000 and $15,000 per person, including per minor. If each child brings in an average of $10,500 for the cartel, these same children have enriched the cartel by almost $1.2 billion. In the same year, the NGOs got $5 billion to move and place the children.

This is a gold mine for everyone involved.

Except for the children.

TAKE ACTION: CLICK HERE to urge your member of Congress and U.S. Senators to ensure that the sponsors or relatives of unaccompanied minors entering our country are who they say they are by requiring significant proof.

• Please urge your elected representatives to strictly and properly vet NGO’s and examine the agencies overseeing them.

• Please urge them to thoroughly investigate how it’s even possible that these hundreds of thousands of children could be unaccounted for! It is believed that many of these children have been trafficked.

• Please tell them this is a travesty that must be rectified.