The Trump administration was unable to locate approximately 1,500 immigrant children who were released from government custody into the care of a sponsor from April to the end of June.
According to oversight findings from the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released this week, the Department of Health and Human Services could not track the whereabouts of 1,488 immigrant children, of a total 11,258, who had been placed with sponsors from April 1 to June 30. The findings also reveal that that 25 of the children ran away from their sponsors.
Similar statistics were revealed earlier this year, when HHS told Congress in April that after making 7,635 calls to sponsors, the agency was unable to locate 1,475 children who were turned over to sponsors between October to December 2017.
[Also read: More than 400 children still separated from migrant parents]
But HHS has maintained that the children are not lost, but that the sponsors may not be responsive.
“As communicated to members of Congress multiple times, these children are not ‘lost,'” said HHS spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley, per CNN. “Their sponsors — who are usually parents or family members and in all cases have been vetted for criminality and ability to provide for them — simply did not respond or could not be reached when this voluntary call was made.”
A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation on Tuesday that would demand more government oversight over immigrant children following their release to sponsors.
The Responsibility for Unaccompanied Minors Act would affirm that HHS has the authority to care for a child until the child’s immigration proceedings are finished, and would require that all adults in the sponsor’s home undergo a background check.
“This bill will ensure that we keep track of unaccompanied minors in our country, which will both help protect them from trafficking and abuse as well as help ensure they appear for their immigration court proceedings,” Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said in a statement. “These efforts are critical for safeguarding these children and upholding our immigration system. This isn’t a partisan issue. The problems that exist today began during the previous administration and have continued under this one, and we have a responsibility to get it right.”
