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The Biden administration has lost contact with roughly one-third of migrant children caught and released between January and May, according to data obtained by Axios through a public records request.

Data received from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request showed about 1 in 3 migrant kids or their sponsors did not respond to calls in the first five months after President Joe Biden took office and restored a catch-and-release border policy for those who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

"This is very dismaying," Mark Greenberg, who oversaw the unaccompanied minors program during the Obama administration, told Axios. "If large numbers of children and sponsors aren’t being reached, that's a very big gap in efforts to help them."
And 65,000 unaccompanied minors crossed the border illegally from January to May, while July set an all-time record in that category, suggesting a growing problem of migrant children the administration cannot locate after being released into the country, according to Axios.

Further, the Biden administration is making far fewer calls than the totals of migrant children released into the U.S. From Biden's inauguration through May, HHS released 32,000 children but only placed 14,600 calls, according to the records obtained via FOIA.

March and April both saw twice as many minors released as check-in calls placed the following month, suggesting the administration is not fully following up on the unaccompanied children.