Arizona Parents Want New DCS Unit to Track Missing Children After Five Children Disappear from Foster Care

Barbara Parker

Parents and foster parents urged reform during a Wednesday committee meeting in the Arizona House of Representatives led by State Representative Barbara Parker (R-Mesa), who successfully passed a 2022 bill to address missing children in the foster care system. 

In a press release published ahead of the meeting, Parker acknowledged “the heart-wrenching disappearance of five children from foster homes” in her district, identifying the missing children as “an issue that strikes at the very core of our commitment to the welfare of vulnerable children.”

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45 Republicans Vote Against Defunding Refugee Resettlement Head Salary over Missing Children, Abuse Allegations

Robin Dunn Marcos

Forty-five U.S. House Republicans voted with Democrats against an amendment to remove an agency head at the center of ongoing allegations of child abuse and neglect. 

After debate on Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Arizona, filed an amendment on Wednesday using the Holman Rule to remove Robin Dunn Marcos, director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Under the Biden administration, Marcos oversees ORR’s scandal-plagued Unaccompanied Children Program, which has funneled an unprecedented number of unaccompanied minors (UAC) into the U.S., arriving at the southern and northern borders. ORR is responsible for vetting sponsors and placing UACs in homes and facilities nationwide.

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Commentary: California Launches New ‘Ebony Alert’ Searches Only for Black Youths

The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides all Americans with “the equal protection of the laws.” But California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom seems to think this doesn’t apply to the once “Golden” state, since he has now signed into law a bill that creates a special emergency alert — but only for missing black children and no one else.

Called — we’re not making this up — the “Ebony Alert,” the new signal is just for missing black youths between the ages of 12 and 25. The usual “Amber Alert” that has been sounding off Americans’ phones for years applies only to children (of all colors) under 17 years of age. Amber Alerts were started in 1996 after the abduction and murder of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman in Arlington, Texas.

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HHS Audit Finds Florida’s Foster Care System Didn’t Properly Report Missing Children

An audit recently released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General gave the state of Florida low marks for its stewardship of children in its foster care system.

The OIG audit found that state agencies were failing to properly report missing foster care children in accordance with federal law and some didn’t report them missing at all.

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