FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—President Donald Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services has launched a new program to locate missing foster children, The Daily Signal can first report.
The agency’s Administration of Children and Families has piloted a new program in Mississippi to rescue foster children before they are trafficked. About 60% of all child sex trafficking victims have spent time in the child welfare system. About 23,000 kids went missing while in foster care in 2024.
“One of the largest pipelines to domestic trafficking is vulnerable youth who have experienced foster care,” Assistant Secretary of Health for the Administration of Children and Families Alex Adams told The Daily Signal in an interview. “Our primary goal is to prevent that from happening.”
The new program, Operation Hope, has already located 13 missing foster children in the Magnolia State and brought them to safety. In just 48 hours, 87% of Mississippi’s missing foster kids were rescued.
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said her goal is not just to locate vulnerable youth, but also to create a model for other states to use.
“There are children all across this country who live without hope, but through partnerships like this we can show them that we care, that they matter, and that they deserve hope,” she said.
Adams said the program will be replicated across the country. ACF and Fitch are both seeking other states that are willing to implement Operation Hope.
“We’re going to be looking for supportive law enforcement partners, specifically partnerships with attorney general’s offices to expand this,” Adams said. “We’ve got a turnkey model of great federal resources with state and local law enforcement to replicate what we did in Mississippi in pretty short order, so we’re going to be looking for active partners on that at the federal level.”
Mississippi was a natural fit to pilot the program because Fitch has been “an absolute champion throughout her term for vulnerable youth,” Adams said.
“I know Attorney General Fitch is going to be reaching out and encouraging other states to do so as well, and offering some of the expertise her agency has developed as a template to other states as well,” Adams said.
HHS implemented “Project Hope” in Kansas and Missouri during the first Trump administration, locating 42 missing youth.
The president is now relaunching Operation Hope as a trauma-informed, law enforcement-led operation to locate and recover missing youth before traffickers can reach them.
Adams said his “Home for Every Child” campaign aims to prevent entries into foster care and place children who do need to enter the system in family settings where they are less vulnerable to traffickers. For those who do go missing, Adams’ mantra is “leave no one behind.”
Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell is the White House correspondent for the Daily Signal.
Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal by Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
I don’t see any democ-rats supporting this now & probably never will.they will likely use this as something to attack president Trump.you know,helping little kids in America.
The children trafficked across the border. … so many of them … forgotten by Biden and his people. HOMAN is fiercely focused on finding as many of these minor children as possible. Homan has been clear. If anyone gets in his way of ICE recovering these children or the criminal illegals, they go to jail! GODSPEED TO HOMAN. ❤️????????.
I was adopted as an infant but not everybody was that lucky that needed parents. Now I see some are far unluckier than I ever imagined!
I appreciate everything that First Lady Melania Trump is doing for foster children. There are homeless children enrolled in the education system. Please don’t leave them behind.
Every program democrats introduced ended up in a disaster that someone else had to clean up, now a new program is being introduced to keep children safe, why are they in danger in the first place, foster care replaced home for children, someone’s making money, kids are not safe, we pay for the fiasco and no one is held responsible , same with the drug addicts and mentally uncapable, now they all are called homeless .If forced into shelters all will be wonderful, problem solved .All the politicians responsible for this tragedy still at the trove.
Politicians are always coming up with new programs , never really fixes anything , it just costs the Tax-payer more money .
I so love news like this article. Not the need for such articles, but the news of something being done about this need. What a world, when young children cannot be safe from this horror. People, please vote your conscience in this matter. Remember the open borders of the Biden administration, and all the fraud in our government supports,ie medicaid and Social Security. This fraud was for the most part, implemented by people from other countries, that we allowed into our nation.
Never allow a DemocRat to foster children. Problem fixed.
imo
Please get everyone you can to vote to continue this moral direction!
And people attack his morality! He was a playboy with beautiful mature women, NOT Children!
Freeing sex-slaves from DemocRats one by one.
imo