Fact check: What is the total number of undocumented immigrants reported missing to US authorities between 2020 and 2024?

1. Why the GAO’s Missing Migrant Program doesn’t give the headline figure you asked for

The Government Accountability Office’s March 2024 review of the Border Patrol’s Missing Migrant Program documents activities to rescue migrants and recover remains along the southwest border but does not compile a national count of undocumented migrants reported missing between 2020 and 2024. The GAO material focuses on program operations, search-and-rescue logistics, and data management concerns rather than on producing an overarching missing-person tally covering all jurisdictions or all reporting mechanisms ^[1]. That operational focus leaves a gap between programmatic descriptions and the single-number total the question requests.

2. Missing-children reporting is related but not equivalent to missing undocumented adults

Analyses of missing-children data—such as the Noticias Telemundo piece—underscore that Hispanic children are overrepresented in missing-children statistics and that organizations like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children maintain datasets on minors. Those data address a specific population (children) and often do not indicate immigration status, so they cannot be straightforwardly summed into a total count of undocumented immigrants missing to U.S. authorities for 2020–2024 ^[2]. The distinction between missing children, missing adults, and immigration status is a key definitional barrier to aggregation.

3. FBI NCIC statistics exist, but the supplied summary does not extract the immigrant subset

The FBI’s 2024 NCIC Missing and Unidentified Person Statistics report is a comprehensive federal resource on missing-person reports, and the 2024 report is referenced in the dataset; however, the provided analysis indicates the summary does not isolate undocumented-immigrant cases or produce a 2020–2024 subtotal ^[3]. NCIC aggregates reports across jurisdictions, but classification by immigration status is not necessarily standard in missing-person reporting, and the supplied materials do not show a filtered count for undocumented immigrants across the target period.

4. Departmental encounter and enforcement tallies are distinct from missing-person reports

The Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection datasets focus on encounters, apprehensions, expulsions, removals, and self-deportations, not on missing-person case counts; the dataset notes CBP Nationwide Encounters data but confirms it does not provide a missing-immigrant total for 2020–2024 ^[4]. DHS press releases and 2025 enforcement claims about removals or self-deportations also do not equate to missing-person reports and postdate the 2020–2024 window or address different phenomena, so they cannot fill the specific gap ^[6].

5. Recent political claims on missing immigrant children complicate the record but don’t resolve the total

Statements reported in late 2025—such as the claim that nearly 25,000 missing illegal immigrant children were “found”—are outside the 2020–2024 span and represent politically charged summaries that mix discovery circumstances (trafficking, family hiding, reunifications) with varying definitions of “missing” ^[7]. Those later claims illustrate definitional and temporal complexity: counting methodologies, who reports cases to authorities, and whether recovered children were previously officially reported as missing all affect any aggregate. The supplied analyses do not reconcile these differences into the requested 2020–2024 total.

6. Database limitations and jurisdictional fragmentation prevent a clean aggregation

The dataset highlights multiple databases—NCIC, NamUs, Missing Migrant Program records, and state/local child-missing reports—with inconsistent coding for immigration status, overlapping jurisdictions, and no single mandated field capturing “undocumented” status across all reports ^{[1] [3] [5]}. These structural differences in record-keeping and reporting responsibility explain why the provided materials cannot deliver a single authoritative figure for undocumented migrants reported missing during 2020–2024.

7. What would be required to produce the requested total with confidence

To produce a credible total one would need access to raw missing-person report data across federal, state, and local systems, a reliable indicator of immigration status within those records, and an agreed methodology for deduplication and time-window assignment. None of the supplied analyses presents such a harmonized dataset; each source addresses parts of the landscape—program operations, child-specific statistics, or aggregated missing-person summaries—but no supplied analysis offers the cross-system reconciliation needed for an accurate 2020–2024 count ^{[1] [2] [3] [5]}.

8. Bottom line for your question: the materials here cannot produce a single number

Based on the provided analyses, there is no verifiable total of undocumented immigrants reported missing to U.S. authorities between 2020 and 2024 in this dataset. The sources confirm relevant activity and datasets exist but also reveal definitional, temporal, and jurisdictional gaps that prevent aggregation from the supplied material ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]}. To answer definitively would require targeted data access and methodology reconciliation across the identified federal and state reporting systems.