Did ICE find more than 3,000 missing children in Minnesota? Unpacking Trump admin's claim

On Feb. 12, 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump's "border czar" Tom Homan signaled the end of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Operation Metro Surge immigration crackdown in Minnesota and claimed ICE had found 3,364 "missing" migrant children during the two-month-plus operation — the latest version of a claim the Trump administration has been making since at least 2024.

Similar claims have circulated since a Fox News host first credited Homan with locating tens of thousands of "missing" children in early 2025. In December 2025, Homan again claimed Trump's administration had "rescued" more than 62,000 unaccompanied migrant children, a claim then repeated by Trump. In this most recent iteration, Homan asserted — without evidence or context — in a Feb. 12 news conference (starting around the 10:23 mark):

In addition to taking public safety threats off the street, ICE, here in this state [Minnesota], have located 3,364 missing unaccompanied alien children. Children that the last administration lost and weren't even looking for. That's because of the leadership of President Trump that these children were located. 

Dozens of Snopes readers searched the site and emailed to confirm whether Homan's claim was true, and social media posts across multiple platforms (archived, archived) also touted the number.

It's unclear how Homan arrived at the figure of 3,364 missing children ICE allegedly found in Minnesota. ICE has not officially published information regarding who these children were or how ICE found them, and the circumstances of the children allegedly going "missing" have gone unspecified.

We reached out to ICE and DHS seeking information regarding where Homan sourced the 3,364 number, and a DHS spokesperson responded over email with a version of a public statement the department originally released in November 2025 (the February 2026 statement differed only in terms of the number of children the administration claimed to have located):

Secretary Noem is leading efforts to rescue and stop the exploitation of the 450,000 unaccompanied children the Biden administration lost or placed with unvetted sponsors. Many of the children who came across the border unaccompanied were allowed to be placed with sponsors who were smugglers and sex traffickers. The Trump administration has located more than 145,000 of these children in-person, in the United States, through visits and door knocks. We've jumpstarted our efforts to rescue children who were victims of sex and labor trafficking by working with our state and local law enforcement partners to locate these children. President Trump and Secretary Noem are laser-focused on protecting children and will continue to work with federal, state, and local law enforcement to reunite children with their families.

When Snopes investigated Homan's previous claim about ICE rescuing migrant children in December 2025, we found it was built on the false assumption that the children were "missing" in the first place. 

The claims Homan has repeatedly made about "missing alien children" who were "rescued" by the Trump administration appeared to all stem from an August 2024 report by the Department of Homeland Security regarding more than 300,000 children who had not yet received a notice to appear in immigration court between October 2018 and September 2023, although Homan did not directly cite the report. (Notably, the time period covered in the report includes more than half of Trump's first term.) There was no evidence the children were missing in the sense of their families not knowing their whereabouts.

Breaking down 2024 report at heart of claim

According to the report, ICE was unable to "monitor all unaccompanied migrant children released from DHS and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' custody," meaning that rather than the children being officially "missing," ICE didn't have them in its system because it did not have the capacity to issue notices to (and keep tabs on) all unaccompanied children DHS released or transferred to HHS. 

We know Homan was likely referring to this report on Feb. 12 because, in December 2025, he claimed ICE had found more than 62,000 children of the 300,000 the Biden administration had allegedly lost track of — which aligns with the DHS report that found 323,000 children either did not receive notices to appear in court or received notices but failed to appear in court. (The 62,000 children Homan claimed were found stemmed from a November 2025 ICE initiative aimed at identifying unaccompanied migrant children.)

Homan later claimed, on Jan. 30, that ICE had found more than 145,000 of these approximately 300,000 children (archived) — meaning ICE would have located about 83,000 children in less than two months.

As Jonathan Beier, an associate director with Acacia Center for Justice's unaccompanied children program, told Snopes in January 2025, "Children who were never 'missing' shouldn't be described as having been 'found.'"

The assertion that ICE "found" or "rescued" these children is also on shaky ground. The November 2025 initiative to "locate and conduct welfare checks" on unaccompanied migrant children involves vetting and arresting their sponsors — "qualified parents, guardians, relatives or other adults" — for alleged crimes, including sex trafficking and other abuse.

These crimes, however, were largely not proven. Out of 16 examples of "ICE administrative immigration arrests based on sponsors' criminal activity" published in a Nov. 14 DHS news release, only one linked to further information about the alleged crime. Others did not specify any names, dates or location beyond the state. A DHS spokesperson also emailed a list of 16 such crimes to Snopes, none of which contained links to sources, the names of the alleged criminals or any other details. For example: "In Arizona, ICE arrested a Guinean alien sponsor who had been arrested by Arizona law enforcement for felony aggravated assault."

As immigration operations continue across the U.S., the Trump administration's claims that missing children were found or rescued more likely means children whom ICE lost track of in the system are being identified and their sponsors arrested.

Homan himself told The Washington Post in December 2024 that these "missing" children "were probably with their parents or other family members." The article read:

In sum …

Homan's Feb. 12 assertion that ICE found 3,364 missing children in Minnesota appeared to be another version of a claim various members of the Trump administration have repeated since 2024 that ICE "found" or "rescued" thousands of missing children.

It stemmed from a DHS report that found ICE didn't have the capacity to issue notices to appear in court (and keep tabs on) all unaccompanied children DHS released or transferred to HHS between October 2018 and September 2023 — a loose definition of "missing."

It's unclear how Homan determined ICE found 3,364 of these children, or where these thousands of children (or their sponsors) are, as of this writing.

This isn't the only rumor Snopes has investigated about Homan and his role in DHS. For more, see our collection of 10 rumors about the border czar.