Fact check: How many children have ICE lost track of under Trump administration?

Executive summary — What the figures actually say, and why they don't line up

The available reporting presents two distinct sets of claims: investigative outlets document "more than 100" U.S. citizen children left stranded after ICE arrests, while statements from Trump-era officials assert tens of thousands (roughly 22,000–25,000) of missing migrant children have been located. Separately, several outlets report roughly 400 children have been taken into federal custody since the administration began stepped‑up arrests, but these counts address different populations, times, and definitions, which explains the apparent contradiction between a small number of "stranded citizen kids" and very large counts of "missing" migrant children ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]}.

1. Why ‘more than 100’ appears in multiple investigations and what it covers

Several investigative reports converged on a similar finding: CNN and related outlets documented just over 100 U.S. citizen children left temporarily without caregivers after ICE arrests, describing individual casework where parents lacked time to arrange care or were denied protections that would have allowed safer transitions. These pieces focus on documented instances of parental detention and immediate child welfare impacts in specific locales and time windows, not on national aggregate follow‑up of long‑term outcomes. The reporting centers on stranded U.S. citizen children as distinct from unaccompanied or missing migrant minors (p1_s1