How many children have the DHS found since Trump came into office
Executive summary
A single authoritative DHS figure answering “how many children DHS has found since Trump took office” is not publicly available in the reviewed reporting; media and political claims point to several different totals—most prominently a claim that “75,000–80,000” children were located cited on Fox from Trump allies [1]—but independent and government documents show a tangle of related but distinct counts (e.g., allegations about 300,000 unlocated cases, OIG monitoring shortfalls, and tens of thousands of rescues or procedural lapses) without a single consolidated “found” total from DHS in the sources supplied [2] [3] [1] [4] [5].
1. The headline claim and where it came from
The clearest explicit number presented as “found” since the Trump transition was the 75,000–80,000 figure reported by Fox News quoting Tom Homan and repeated by host Harris Faulkner; Politifact summarized that broadcast claim and noted experts say the framing of these children as “missing” is misleading [1]. That 75k–80k figure appears in public commentary and cable segments, not in a formal DHS aggregate report cited in the provided material [1].
2. The larger 300,000 figure and its provenance
Political leaders and some administration statements have repeatedly referenced an estimate that more than 300,000 migrant children could not be located or were “lost” after release to sponsors; BBC reporting traced that 300,000 number to statements by incoming Trump border officials and others criticizing the prior administration’s tracking [6]. A DHS press release used the same 300,000 framing in accusations about the previous administration’s placements [2], but that release mixes advocacy language with operational anecdotes and does not present an OIG-style line-by-line accounting that would definitively reconcile arrivals, releases, and later “found” outcomes [2].
3. Government oversight findings and related counts
The DHS Office of Inspector General and congressional oversight materials document sizeable monitoring gaps and specific counts—an OIG management alert flagged ICE’s inability to monitor all unaccompanied children [7], a House committee cited OIG material saying 31,000 children were released to blank or undeliverable addresses and more than 43,000 failed to appear for hearings [3], and Senate materials released data that 11,488 children were placed with unvetted sponsors between 2021–2025 [5]. Those numbers describe systemic failures, placements, or record deficiencies rather than a singular cumulative tally of children “found” after being declared missing.
4. Other metrics often conflated with “found”
Reporting also cites different metrics that are sometimes conflated with locating children: for example, DHS and DOJ DNA-collection data show tens of thousands of minors had genetic samples taken—reporting cited roughly 133,000 migrant children for whom DNA was collected in recent years [8]—and multiple rescue and recovery operations are highlighted in press releases and task-force reports [2] [9]. These are separate measures (DNA collection, rescues, recovery operations) and cannot be equated automatically with a verified count of previously “missing” children that DHS has since located.
5. Why the numbers diverge and what “found” actually means
Discrepancies arise because sources use different baselines and definitions: “missing” can mean lost to federal monitoring, never properly followed up on by ORR, failed court appearances, or being placed with an unvetted sponsor—each yields different counts [4] [5] [3]. Political statements and media segments sometimes compress those categories into single headliners—e.g., 300,000 “lost” children—while oversight reports tease apart categories but stop short of providing a single post-2024 tally of how many of those specific cases DHS has since located [7] [3] [4].
6. Bottom line answer
Based on the supplied reporting, there is no standalone DHS-confirmed public total labeled “children DHS has found since Trump came into office”; the prominent media claim that “about 75,000–80,000” were found is publicly traceable to Fox quoting Trump-aligned officials [1], but that claim is not corroborated by a DHS aggregate disclosure in the provided materials. Oversight and investigative documents instead offer related figures—300,000 cited as potentially unaccounted-for in political statements [6] [2], tens of thousands identified in OIG or congressional itemizations reflecting specific deficiencies or placements [3] [5], and other operational metrics such as DNA collection in the hundreds of thousands that measure different actions [8]. The evidence available in these sources supports the conclusion that precise, auditable confirmation of a single “found” total has not been published in the documents provided.