The Trump administration has found more than 129,000 migrant children who went missing under the Biden administration.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced on X Friday that federal authorities located the children after “the Biden administration lost them” and that “too many … were exploited, trafficked and abused.”
“We will continue to ramp up efforts and will not stop until every last child is found,” Noem said.
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Federal officials combed through immigration court records and data kept by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to find the children, a federal government source familiar with the operation told The Daily Wire. They only counted those who showed up for their immigration hearings.
Under @POTUS Trump, @DHSgov and @HHSGov have located more than 129,143 unaccompanied children that the Biden Administration lost. Too many of these children were exploited, trafficked and abused.
We will continue to ramp up efforts and will not stop until every last child is…
— Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) December 19, 2025
It was a massive undertaking since the Biden administration kept poor records on the children after they crossed into the United States, said the source, who was granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
“Under the Biden administration, the data was so bad, and our ability to find where these cases went was so bad, we just had to comb through every single agency to see if these kids [had] ever stepped in front of another agency,” the source explained.
“The kid had to be present [in court] for us to count it,” the source added.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration revealed it had located roughly 62,000 of the missing migrant children.
Border Patrol agents must hand unaccompanied migrant kids to the Department of Health and Human Services, which helps connect them with a sponsor living in the United States.
Under the Biden administration, roughly 500,000 migrant minors crossed the border unaccompanied. Many of them were released to poorly vetted sponsors who, whistleblowers say, never had to appear in person to prove the children were going to safe homes.
The vetting concerns were also corroborated in an inspector general’s report released last year.
Whistleblowers said they believed some of the sponsors were traffickers and gangbangers.
Roughly 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children were never given their court dates, the government watchdog found.
Another 32,000 migrant children who had future court dates never showed up to their hearings, according to the report, which tracked cases from October 2018 to September 2023.