A new analysis found that one of every three missing children in the United States is Hispanic.
NBC's Noticias Telemundo reviewed data from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). According to their findings, 130 of the 414 children up to 12 years old that were reported missing between 2003 and 2023 are Hispanic.
White children in this age group were the next most represented group with 94 cases during the same two decades. There are also 90 reports of missing Black children. The NCMEC’s data is based on records from the FBI’s National Crime Information Center and the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.
"In general we have about 4,500 missing minors in the United States who have active wanted posters on our website. Those are only the cases that we know of; of that number, around 23% are Hispanic/ Latinos," said John Bischoff, vice president of the NCMEC’s missing minors division. “It is certainly a large population that worries us.”
Bischoff said Hispanic children tend to go missing for the same reasons as children of other races – which the center categorizes as fugitives in danger, family abductions, nonfamily abductions, and missing, injured or missing for other reasons.
Trent Steele, director of the Anti-Predator Project, told NBC News that Hispanic children represent the largest portion of the nation’s missing children cases because of issues specifically impacting “marginalized communities.”
“I think that in the Latino and Black communities, the numbers are a little higher because they are affected by situations of poverty and inequality," Steele said. He also suggested that "many are put in situations where they disappear and flee.”
Differences between cases of missing children have often been analyzed through a lens of racial inequity.
In 2019, CNN reported that “Black kids go missing at a higher rate than white kids” but that white children receive more public attention because “families don’t always have the financial resources to respond appropriately when their child is missing,” relatives may hesitate to call the police, or law enforcement may “classify children of color as runaways without having all the details.”
In 2023, USA Today reported that “police, the media and the public” are “less likely to give their best efforts for missing Black children.”
According to the report:The fact that missing Black people command less media attention than whites has been well documented by academic researchers. Their studies have repeatedly found that cases of missing Black people, children and adults alike, are covered less often than whites and their stories don’t travel as widely through the nation’s newsrooms.
There is little empirical evidence that explains why.
A leading theory faults the lack of racial diversity in newsrooms and media ownership. Another blames the socioeconomic status of Black victims. Because missing Black children often come from high-crime, low-income neighborhoods, the reasoning goes, their families have less influence with law enforcement and fewer financial resources to devote to publicity campaigns.
