Authorities receive note from smugglers about two abandoned migrant girls at southern border.

This week, two migrant children were left behind by smugglers at the southern border in Texas. As Texas authorities arrived to help, the smugglers fled back to Mexico, leaving the girls in need of rescue. The ongoing issue of unaccompanied minors crossing the border continues to be a concern.

The two little girls, aged five and nine, were recovered by Texas Department of Public Safety troopers after the smuggler abandoned them and fled back to Mexico.

U.S. Border Patrol received a note with an address and phone number from a group of girls who originated from El Salvador.

The recent migrant crisis has led to a significant increase in the number of unaccompanied migrant children crossing the border, which highlights ongoing concerns about this issue.

Rescued children who are abandoned often have contact information written on paper or sewn into their clothing. These children are eventually transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and released to sponsors in the U.S.

Over the past five years, more than 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children (UCs) failed to attend immigration court hearings, and ICE could not locate all those who did not appear, according to a report by the DHS Office of Inspector General sent to Congress earlier this year.

According to the internal watchdog, during our ongoing audit to evaluate ICE's capacity to monitor the location and condition of UCs who were released or transferred from the custody of DHS and HHS, we discovered that ICE transferred over 448,000 UCs to HHS between fiscal years 2019 and 2023.

Despite ICE's efforts, it was unable to track the whereabouts of all UCs who were released by HHS and did not show up for their scheduled immigration court appearances. ICE reported that over 32,000 UCs failed to appear for their immigration court hearings during the FYs 2019 to 2023.

ICE has failed to schedule immigration court dates and serve notices, resulting in approximately 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children not being marked for removal proceedings.

Although over 500,000 unaccompanied migrant children entered the U.S. during the Biden administration, only 411 were removed in FY 2024, an increase from the 212 in FY 2023. In contrast, over 4,000 were removed in FY 2022.