In August 2020, the U.S. Marshals rescued 26 children during Operation Not Forgotten in Atlanta.
A senior official with the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) reported that USMS recovered a record 387 missing children in 2020.
Last year, we recovered 387 missing children, the most we have ever recovered, nearly 100 more than the year before,” Floriano Whitwell, chief inspector in charge of the US Marshals Service’s sex crimes investigation, told independent journalist Sharyl Attkisson. nearly 100.
“But I also want to emphasize that, in my opinion, we’ve only scratched the surface.”
According to the FBI, the number of children reported missing is 421,394 in 2019 and 365,348 in 2020, with most cases considered “near-crisis runaways.”
Whitwell said, “I am personally concerned about the lack of attention, the lack of resources and the downright lack of recovery of our nation’s missing children, and now know what an epidemic it is. As a result, I’ve decided to make it my focus (of work).”
In recent months, the U.S. Marshals Service has conducted a series of operations in states including Oklahoma, Iowa, Ohio, Louisiana, Virginia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Last year, Tennessee’s Operation Strong Volunteers recovered up to 150 missing children.
Many people don’t realize it, but hundreds of children go missing in our state every month,” said David Rausch, director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, in a statement in early March. From runaways who may have left out of desperation or loss to those who are tangled in custody battles, every one of them deserves a chance to respond, which is why they also deserve our best work to help them.”
And most recently, USMS rescued 21 missing children in Iowa as part of Operation Homecoming.
The children, who were between the ages of 4 and 17, were “some of the most dangerous and challenging recoveries in the region based on high-risk indicators such as exposure to narcotics, child exploitation, physical or sexual abuse, and medical or mental health conditions,” according to a March press release from the federal law enforcement agency.
U.S. Marshals Service Director Donald Washington said in October 2020 that about 1,300 missing children have been recovered since fiscal year 2016.
“At any given time, there are many more (missing) in the country,” he said in an interview with Fox News. “For example, today I looked at that number and we have 21,000 active missing person cases open today under the age of 18. So there’s a lot more.”
Washington noted that some of the missing children “may be in the middle of gang affiliations or among drug users” and in other potentially adverse situations.
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