Tens of Thousands of Children Missing from US Foster Care System

The Washington Post
Full article by Rene Denfeld
Edited version below by Maddy Spivack

Following the wake of public outrage stemming from the federal misplacement of over one thousand migrant children, it is critical to draw attention to the more than 60,000 children missing from the United States foster care system. Child welfare agencies across the United States closed the cases of over 61,000 missing children.

Closing a case does not mean that the agencies located a missing child; the agencies simply cease any efforts to try and find these missing children. Some states have a policy where a child missing for six months is dropped completely by the foster care system. These missing children are not guaranteed to be in harm, but the main issue is that state agencies lose track of children supposedly in their care. When agencies lose who they are supposed to be protecting, these children can become victims of sex trafficking.

Human rights attorney Malika Saada Saar equates the United States Foster Care System to a “supply chain to traffickers.” This comparison is supported by reports from the FBI’s national effort to recover victims of child sex trafficking, which estimate sixty percent of the recovered victims came from foster care. The question remains: why is no one looking for the tens of thousands of American children lost by the foster system? 

This is by no means to say that the lives of American children are in any way more important than the lives of migrant children. The difference between the two groups of missing children is that missing migrant children are used as ammo for different political groups to make their case for whatever they endorse. Throwing political agenda aside, the bottom line is that United States agencies in charge of child welfare are failing to keep children safe and accounted for. It is absolutely unacceptable for the U.S. Foster Care System to continue to operate the way it is now. Thousands and thousands of children disappear through the cracks in the system, and too many are never recovered.