Donald Trump recently revived claims about unaccompanied migrant children during a series of interviews and rallies, accusing the Biden administration of losing track of thousands of children who crossed the U.S. border. In a June interview on Fox News, host Rachel Campos-Duffy stated that 80,000 migrant children had been "lost", prompting surprise from the former president when she asked if he would commit to finding those children. "I haven't been asked that question, but the answer is yes", Trump replied, adding "Many of them are dead. They have done such a bad job."
Campos-Duffy was referring to reports of unaccompanied children at the border who had been released to sponsors by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). A New York Times report had noted that about 85,000 children could not be reached by officials through follow-up calls, making them vulnerable to exploitation. However, the media outlet did not claim these children were lost. Trump escalated the rhetoric by stating many children had died, although no evidence supports this claim.
During his presidency, Trump's administration faced similar challenges, with thousands of migrant children unable to be contacted after being placed with sponsors. In some cases, sponsors or children did not answer calls from officials due to fear of government agents or changes in phone numbers. Nevertheless, Trump criticized Biden's handling of the situation, saying it would have been a scandal had these numbers occurred under his watch.
By July, Trump increased his figures, claiming that the government had lost track of 150,000 children, he inflated the number to 300,000, citing a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report. The document, however, noted that around 32,000 children had missed their immigration hearings, while another 291,000 were never issued court notices. These children were not lost, but the DHS flagged concerns that without tracking, they were more susceptible to trafficking or exploitation.
Despite a lack of evidence, Trump continued using these exaggerated figures in his campaign speeches, accusing Vice President Kamala Harris of allowing the trafficking of children during her tenure. His claims have since become a recurrent theme in his 2024 campaign, repeating the inflated numbers and asserting widespread harm to migrant children under Biden's administration.
Trump seemed to base this figure on government data indicating that nearly 400,000 children had been placed with sponsors over the past four years. Based on the assumption that the government had lost track of a third of them, that is equivalent to about 133,000 children, according to calculations by the NYT.
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