A recent federal report that found mismanagement regarding the safety and well-being of unaccompanied migrant children (UCs) has raised the ire of U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).
“Specifically, on your department’s watch, tens of thousands of migrant children are now missing — leaving them highly vulnerable to human trafficking and exploitation,” wrote Sen. Blackburn in an Aug. 28 letter sent to U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Patrick Lechleitner.
According to an Aug. 19 report released by the DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG), ICE lost track of at least 32,000 UCs who failed to appear for their immigration court hearings. The agency may have lost track of an additional 291,000 UCs who were not placed in removal proceedings and were never given a court date, the report says.
Under federal law, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is responsible for the care of these children, and it is ICE’s duty to safely transfer UCs to HHS after they are initially taken into custody by border agents, as well as to manage and monitor their immigration cases, Sen. Blackburn wrote.
“Yet, it is plain to me that you have failed in your most basic duty to keep these children safe from harm,” she wrote.
The report also notes that the number of missing children may be much higher, as ICE failed to issue Notices to Appear (NTAs) to more than 291,000 UCs who were not placed in removal proceedings, wrote the lawmaker.
Sen. Blackburn requested that Mayorkas and Lechleitner answer several questions, including what immediate steps each department will take to ensure these children remain safe and accounted for while in custody, and if they can confirm that ICE does not have a consistent, reliable means of monitoring the location and status of these migrant children.
“The American people, and the families of these hundreds of thousands of children, deserve answers about your reckless disregard for the well-being of the children in your care and what your department is doing to address these failures,” she wrote.