The FBI has located more than 6,200 missing children and is “advancing the mission of protecting America’s children at a level never seen before,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a March 17 update about the agency’s “historic year” in 2025. The number of children recovered was more than 30 percent higher than the total in the previous year.
Of these, 2,700 were identified to be victims of child exploitation, the Department of Justice said.
Patel said that in 2025, the FBI arrested 1,700 child predators, arrested more than 300 human traffickers, and dismantled 764 criminal networks. Moreover, more than 3.8 million pedophile accounts on the dark web were terminated, the director said in a summary posted on X.
The FBI also made more than 435 arrests through its Violent Crimes Against Children program, leading to indictments of more than 300 individuals. Online exploitation and nihilistic violent extremist arrests were up 490 percent from 2024, the FBI reported.
“We rebuilt the FBI, surging agents out of D.C. and into communities, expanding intel sharing, and deploying cutting-edge tech and AI to hunt predators faster than ever,” Patel said. “Under President [Donald] Trump’s leadership, we remain relentless in protecting children and will not slow down.”
Nearly 30,000 children were reported missing in 2024, the FBI said in a Sept. 10 post, citing data from the Congress‑authorized nonprofit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which partners with the agency.
Roughly 90 percent of children in the cases that were reported to the center that year were returned home.
“Missing children cases fit into one of several categories beyond true stranger abductions,“ the FBI stated. ”Some are taken by someone they know, such as a parent, other relative, or family friend. Others run away to meet an online acquaintance or to escape their home life.
“Some children are reported as missing to cover up a murder. Some are kidnapped by people who want to raise the child as their own. Others—usually the very young or those with developmental disabilities—wander off from home and get lost.”
According to data from the Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which captures reports from every law enforcement agency nationwide, there were 349,557 reports of missing people younger than 21 in 2024. The office awarded more than $86 million in fiscal year 2024 to prevent child abduction, locate missing children, and provide technical training and assistance.
The children were provided help to facilitate “their reunification with legal guardians or find appropriate placement,” the U.S. Marshals Service said. The primary goal of the operation was to “recover and safely locate critically missing children.”
According to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office, some of the recovered children were victims of sex trafficking or sexual assault.
“We will never stop fighting to protect California children and bring them home,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. “Finding missing children and bringing them home safely is some of the most important work we can do.”
Numerous children are also reported missing annually in Canada. According to data from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains, 32,680 children were reported missing in 2024.
The recovered children are part of the more than 300,000 unaccompanied immigrant children whom the previous administration had turned over to unvetted sponsors and lost track of, the border czar said.
“President Trump promised that we would find these children, and under his strong leadership and with his unwavering support, the patriots at these, and other partner, agencies have been—and will continue to do—just that,” Homan said.
