The New York-based nonprofit legal aid group 1800Migrante expressed concern about “the thousands of unaccompanied children who arrived in the United States and whose whereabouts are still unknown,” as immigration agents continue to detain minors in operations they carry out throughout the country.
William Murillo, executive president of the organization, said many people are “shocked” by the recent detention of a 5-year-old Ecuadorian boy, who was arrested with his father in Minnesota and taken to a family detention center in Texas.
According to a study by 1800Migrante, at least 37,088 minors have disappeared after being handed over to people who had no relationship with them, and neither the US authorities nor those of their countries of origin know their whereabouts.
The figure exceeds the 32,000 reported by the Department of Homeland Security. However, the legal group did an analysis last year, based on information published by The New York Times about these children, covering between 2015 and 2023 and obtained after an Access to Information lawsuit.
The Times published the data “raw”, without processing it with the intention of “making it available to the public, for broad and non-commercial use by historians, researchers, policy makers and the media,” Murillo recalls.
He said that 1800Migrante.com analyzed this data for several months and came up with the figure of more than 37,000 children whose fate is unknown. Today he brought up the data again after the strong reaction unleashed after the arrest of the 5-year-old boy.
“With the analysis of the figures (obtained by the Times) sufficient evidence was obtained to document and denounce that the problem of unaccompanied minors entering the United States is much more complex and disturbing than the United States is willing to admit,” he indicates.
Data published by the Times in 2023 showed a total of 553,322 children handed over to a relative compared to the 448,000 reported by the government between 2019 and 2023. There are more than 105,322 minors who were not counted in official reports, according to Murillo.
At that time, The Times published a report about some minors, ages 13, 14, 15, in various states who were working in factories and some were not attending school. The whereabouts of many others are unknown.
“We don’t know what hell they could be living through,” says Murillo, who reiterates that “there must be outrage for these kids and others who, like the 5-year-old boy, are in immigration centers.”
According to the analysis of the 1800Migrante group, Guatemala is the country with the highest number of minors handed over to strangers, followed by Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua and Ecuador, among others.
«There are thousands of missing children, how come Immigration handed children over to strangers? “We demand justice and transparency,” he said.
