Trump’s claim that Biden lost 88,000 children, many of whom are now “dead”

“You know, we have 88,000 missing children right now. Can you imagine if Trump had 88,000 missing children? 88,000? That’s a holocaust. That’s as bad as you can imagine.”

— Trump in a Interview with Dr Phil6th of June

One of Trump’s signature actions is to turn criticism of him into an attack on his opponents. When Trump was president, he implemented a “zero tolerance” policy at the border that resulted in children being separated from their families. This policy was widely condemned before Trump reversed course. President Biden called it “a moral failure” and made it a major issue in the 2020 presidential campaign. After taking office, Biden created a task force to identify about 5,000 children who had been separated from their families.

So it’s no surprise that Trump is accusing Biden of doing something similar. Nor is it a surprise that he would grossly exaggerate the significance of a number based on facts. The children are not missing – and they are not dead. In fact, they have not responded to calls from any government agency.

But Trump is right to say that the outrage could be greater if he were president. When a similar statistic emerged during his presidency — albeit a much lower number of 1,475 — Democrats like Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) lamented “1,500 children lost” in 2018, and the Washington Post published an article about the uproar that included a reference to a #WhereAreTheChildren campaign.

Both Trump’s and Kaine’s numbers refer to children who crossed the border without adult supervision and who the federal government is supposed to be helping. Confusingly, however, they are calculated using different metrics and reflect very different time periods.

Let’s take a closer look at these numbers and find out what they really mean.

A complex system of laws and legal procedures governs the treatment of children who arrive at the border without adult supervision.

A legal agreement known as the Flores Accord, reached in 1997 by President Bill Clinton’s administration, requires the federal government to release undocumented children rather than detain them—first to their parents if possible, otherwise to other adult relatives, and to licensed programs willing to take over custody if relatives aren’t available. A law signed by President George W. Bush, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, said unaccompanied children are exempt from immediate return to their home country unless they come from Mexico or Canada. The fear was that the children would otherwise become trapped across the border and vulnerable to trafficking.

When the Immigration and Naturalization Service was disbanded in 2002 and the Department of Homeland Security was created, responsibility for caring for and placing these children was transferred to a division of the Department of Health and Human Services – the Office of Refugee Resettlement. This means that the Department of Homeland Security that encounters the children must refer them to the Department of Homeland Security within 72 hours of them being detained and processed by border agents at the border. According to the Office of Refugee Resettlement protocol, case managers are supposed to make three attempts to verify a child’s status between 30 and 37 days after the child is released to a sponsor, preferably by speaking with the child in addition to the sponsor.

But there is no legal requirement for HHS to make these calls — and there is no requirement that the children or sponsor respond. Trump administration officials made this clear when they came under fire over the 1,500 “lost” children.

“The children are not in our custody at this time,” Steven Wagner, deputy secretary of the HHS Administration for Children and Families, told reporters in 2018. “If you call a friend and they don’t answer the phone, don’t assume they’ve been abducted.”

The refugee agency was particularly overwhelmed when a flood of unaccompanied children poured across the border early in the Biden presidency. Transfers of undocumented children from DHS to HHS averaged just over 50,000 per year in the three fiscal years before the pandemic, compared with nearly 125,000 per year in the first three years of the Biden administration, although the number has declined in the past six months.

A report from the HHS inspector general released in February said that in 22 percent of cases in March and April 2021, the refugee agency did not make calls within 38 days of a child’s resettlement. “For late calls, the average time to call was 122 days,” the report said. “The last call for a child in our sample was made 324 days after that child’s release.”

Let us now take a closer look at the numbers used in this debate.

The 1,500 figure used during Trump’s term comes from a report that examined a three-month period from October to December 2017, during which HHS relocated 7,635 children. The report found that HHS staff reached a sponsor 81 percent of the time. That meant 19 percent — or 1,475 — were not reached. That number was rounded up to 1,500 in news reports.

The 88,000 figure used by Trump comes from a harrowing 2023 New York Times investigation (which won a Pulitzer Prize) into how the influx of undocumented children across the border has led to sponsors forcing underage children to work in brutal conditions, keeping many of them out of school. (The Biden administration, in response to the articles, promised to fix the problems.)

The New York Times figure, which was actually 85,000, reflects how many children could not be reached in a two-year calendar period (2021-2022). The period is therefore longer, but the number is also based on a different standard — under protocol, HHS must reach both the sponsor and the child because a sponsor could mislead HHS about whether the child is working or in school. Data obtained by the Times show that HHS was unable to reach the child in about 34 percent of calls.

The Times article was carefully written – “the agency was unable to reach more than 85,000 children” – but that has not stopped Republicans from exploiting the number of children as “lost,” just as Democrats did under Trump.

In response to the Times report, the Biden administration stressed that in 81 percent of cases, either the child or the sponsor (or both) had been reached — the same percentage as under Trump. That number is a subset of the Times figure, which does not count conversations with a sponsor on a child’s behalf as reaching the child. The administration has not looked at the metric used by the New York Times, but there is no indication that it has improved in the past year.

Since Biden took office through last month, approximately 400,000 unaccompanied children (not from Mexico) have crossed the border and been transferred to HHS. Using the percentages above, that comes out to approximately:

• 75,000 – neither a child nor a sponsor could be reached.
• 135,000 – the child could not be reached.

Applying the same standards to Trump’s first three years, when the Department of Health and Human Services was assigned about 160,000 unaccompanied children, the result is as follows:

• 30,000 – neither the child nor a sponsor could be reached.
• 54,000 – the child could not be reached.

In other words, HHS’s ability to reach children or their sponsors is no better under Biden than it was before. under Trump. The main difference is that under Biden, many more children are coming across the border, so the number of children who cannot be reached is almost three times as large.

As for Trump’s claim that many of the children are likely dead and that it is a “holocaust,” that is ridiculous. The New York Times has tracked down many children and conducted interviews with them. By his own logic, Trump could be accused of losing 54,000 children. A spokesperson for his campaign did not respond to a request for explanation.

“Republicans in Congress and others continue to misuse the data or blatantly lie,” HHS spokesman Jeff Nesbit said in a statement. “HHS and several other federal agencies support and provide services to unaccompanied children who come to the United States. HHS assumes custody of a child from DHS and cares for them until the child is released to a vetted sponsor. After (the child) is released to a vetted sponsor, HHS voluntarily makes an initial call to check that the child is OK. In addition, HHS provides post-release services, including counseling and support to help children get into school and legal representation during court proceedings. It is wrong and dangerous to falsify data to create fear.”

As usual, Trump takes a fact and twists it to the point of absurdity. The Biden administration’s inability to reach undocumented children in the United States – especially in light of the Times’ reporting – is a serious problem. In fact, the New York Times’ figure of 85,000 is now out of date. Our calculations put it at around 135,000.

But the Trump administration’s performance in reaching children doesn’t seem to be any better — and no one is arguing that the 54,000 children “lost” under Trump are now dead. Trump’s overblown rhetoric is in the realm of the Four Pinocchios, but unusually he relies on a legitimate news report to calculate his number. And his “missing” rhetoric isn’t much different from the way Democrats articulated lower numbers during his time in office. So we’re awarding him three Pinocchios for that number.

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