ICE struggles to track unaccompanied minors, oversight report says

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are using workarounds like spreadsheets and emails to track unaccompanied migrant children after they’re released from government custody, according to a new alert from the Department of Homeland Security’s watchdog. 

That’s one reason the Inspector General concluded that ICE hasn’t been able to monitor the location and status of these children, who the oversight body says are especially at risk for trafficking, exploitation and forced labor.

The government has potentially lost track of thousands of these children in recent years. ICE needs to take “immediate action” regarding the safety of unaccompanied migrant children living in the U.S., DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari writes.

DHS typically places unaccompanied migrant children with the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, which then places these children in shelters or with sponsors as they wait for immigration proceedings. 

ORR also notifies DHS when it places a child with a sponsor — often a family member — after vetting that sponsor. At that point, ORR also provides DHS their address, Diane de Gramont, staff attorney at the National Center for Youth Law, told Nextgov/FCW.

HHS usually retains custody until these minors are put with a sponsor, put in foster care or turn 18, according to the OIG report.

But when a migrant who has been released by HHS doesn’t show up in immigration court, ICE has been “not able to account” for all of their locations, according to the report, which was released Monday. These hearings are “often ICE’s only opportunity to observe and screen [these minors] for trafficking indicators or other safety concerns.”

ICE transferred over 448,000 unaccompanied children to HHS from fiscal 2019 to 2023, according to the report, and 32,000 unaccompanied minors didn't show up for scheduled court appearances in the same time period. The immigration agency did not initiate court proceedings with 291,000 unaccompanied minors formerly in HHS custody, according to the report.

“ICE has good reason to want kids’ contact information for purposes of ensuring that they appear in immigration court,” de Gramont said. “But in terms of the OIG report’s focus on the safety of unaccompanied children, that's really ORR's responsibility and not ICE's responsibility.”

“And there's no reason to believe that… ICE having more contact with kids would in any way ensure their safety, separate from ICE’s interest in immigration enforcement,” she added.

These problems with tracking and ensuring the safety of unaccompanied minors aren’t new. 

As far back as in 2018, a CNN headline declared that the U.S. had lost track of about 1,500 migrant children. A New York Times investigation about child labor among migrant children last year found that HHS couldn’t contact a third of minors after it placed them with sponsors.

Robin Dunn Marcos, director of the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement, fielded questions about her office’s ability to ensure the safety of these migrants during a congressional hearing last year. She told lawmakers that the HHS office’s custodial authority ends once a child is with a sponsor. 

Although the agency does try to maintain contact, it also doesn’t track the location of children post-release, Marcos told lawmakers at the time, emphasizing increased coordination with the Labor Department to address problems with child labor. She said that the agency would appreciate congressional support in beefing up post-release services at HHS.

Information sharing between the two agencies also made headlines during the Trump administration when ORR and HHS penned a new information-sharing agreement for HHS to send data about potential sponsors with DHS, per reporting from AP. 

DHS used that information to arrest potential sponsors for deportation, leading to outcry from immigrant rights groups, human justice organizations and others — as well as a bill from now Democratic presidential nominee, then-Senator Kamala Harris, to ban DHS from using this information for deportation proceedings. 

The ORR-DHS agreement was rescinded in 2021, according to the National Immigrant Justice Center. 

Manual workarounds

In terms of ICE keeping track of minors that don’t show at immigration court, part of the problem is the lack of integrated data systems to track unaccompanied minors.

“ICE did not have an accurate, effective, or automated process for sharing information” — either internally or with other relevant agencies, the OIG report states. ICE field offices are using “manual workarounds such as spreadsheets and emails.”

ICE also doesn’t have an automated process for getting information from the Justice Department about unaccompanied minors who didn’t appear for immigration hearings.

When a child doesn’t appear in immigration court, employees in ICE’s Office of the Principal Legal Advisor have to manually update their case management system, which the inspector general says is missing thousands of cases where unaccompanied children failed to appear. 

Within the agency, ICE’s systems don’t notify each other when a child doesn’t show in immigration court. That means that Enforcement and Removal Operations officers, for example, have to manually look for each case in the OPLA system and enter that status into their own system. 

ICE also doesn’t always inform the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement when unaccompanied children don’t appear in immigration court, according to the report, despite the fact that “HHS is responsible for the care and custody of [unaccompanied migration children],” the Inspector General writes. That means that HHS doesn’t know if these children need wellness checks or other services. 

An ICE spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW that the agency does notify ORR when unaccompanied children don’t show at scheduled hearings.

The watchdog recommended that ICE develop an automated system to track court appearances and maintain address information for unaccompanied migrant children. 

In comments included in the report, ICE concurred with the recommendation, but didn’t commit to fielding such a system, pointing to competing priorities and resource constraints. 

The ICE spokesperson said in a statement that “since last year, ICE has taken steps to automate information sharing related to unaccompanied children’s attendance at immigration court proceedings. We will continue to improve these procedures and implement the OIG’s recommendations.”

Apart from the technology gaps, the inspector general also found problems with a lack of formal policies and processes to follow up with unaccompanied minors that don’t show for their immigration hearings. The watchdog recommended that ICE create such processes.

ICE concurred, stating that it had a new process involving a new, public-facing email inbox at HHS to get messages from ICE about unaccompanied minors that fail to appear in immigration court.

The DHS agency takes issue with parts of the report. The spokesperson said that they are “concerned that the report’s findings are misleading and may be misconstrued,” arguing that the oversight officials left out some reasons why the notice to appear filings may be delayed. 

ICE doesn’t file them until after a child is put with a sponsor, the spokesperson said. 

Also, “unaccompanied children are entitled to certain procedural protections under our laws and, in many cases, may be eligible for immigration relief with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), instead of in the immigration court system,” they said. That includes asylum. “If they are ineligible for relief, USCIS will issue an NTA.”

The report has already gotten attention on Capitol Hill. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., called the findings “catastrophic failures” and has asked DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to answer questions about the report in a letter released on Thursday.