The Trump administration has located more than 22,000 unaccompanied migrant children who were deemed missing after being released into the United States from the U.S.-Mexico border by the Biden administration, according to a Republican senator.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who presided over a Wednesday Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the status of the half a million children who crossed the southern border alone between 2021 and 2024, said the Trump administration was making strides in finding countless children lost inside the country.
“Working with state and local law enforcement authorities, the Trump administration has located more than 22,000 missing illegal migrant children and arrested more than 400 criminal sponsors,” Cornyn said during the hearing Wednesday afternoon. “We’ve witnessed progress in the last eight months, although much remains to be done.”
By the end of the Biden administration, more than 500,000 children had crossed the border without a parent, a staggering figure that far outpaced any previous administration.
Roughly 90% of all children were released to adults within the U.S., except for children from Canadian, Mexican, and some Central American countries.
In May, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) shared with the Washington Examiner that government employees and contractors who cared for unaccompanied immigrant children in custody after they crossed over the southern border had flagged more than 65,000 instances of concern for children in their custody that went unaddressed by the Biden administration.
Children were released to sometimes related adults in the U.S. despite the flags of concern.
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In July, White House officials told the Washington Examiner that investigators had tracked down 10,000 unaccompanied migrant children who were considered “lost” because of incomplete or inaccurate contact information originally provided at the time of their release to HHS.
Former President Joe Biden lost track of 88,000 children, according to a 2023 New York Times report.
