JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — 7/3/24 Update: The U.S. Marshals Service said Wednesday the child recovered from Jacksonville was attributed to a different operation that occurred in April.
In the span of just six weeks, 200 missing children were found during a nationwide operation dubbed “Operation We Will Find You 2."
U.S. Marshals teamed up with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to target areas with high clusters of missing children. They received technical assistance from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
“We were building off the success of the operation we had last year of 'We Will Find You.' What we do as an agency is we try to focus our efforts on high-risk missing children that don't normally get a lot of law enforcement attention,” said Bill Bouldin, a senior inspector with the U.S. Marshals Service.
The operation was conducted from May 20 to June 24, 2024, across the U.S. including in Florida, Michigan, Arizona, New York, North Carolina, California and Oregon.
“We are focusing our efforts on primarily the high-risk runaways, these kids that are running away from foster care or group homes or bad family situations, and they're out on the street, and they're vulnerable,” Bouldin said. “Within a day or so of being on the street, there are adults approaching them, encouraging them either into trafficking or other criminal activity that is just as dangerous.”
Of the 200 children who were found during this operation, the U.S. Marshals Service says 173 were endangered runaways and more than half were removed from dangerous situations. Seventy-seven were found to be in safe locations.
Bouldin says the recovery of these children just scratches the surface. He describes the number of missing children in the U.S. as astronomical.
“On a given day, there are an average of 37,000 juveniles who are sitting in the national database, having at some time been reported as missing. That number goes up. That number goes down. But 37,000 is a very reasonable estimate on the average number of kids on any given day,” Bouldin said. “The hardest part for us and for our partners in law enforcement and DCF is figuring out those kids that ran away because they're just with their boyfriend, or they're at the mall. They're going to run away tonight, but they're going to come home tomorrow when they come home from the party they weren't allowed to go to, and identifying those children that are really at a very high risk. And that if we don't find them, they're going to be exploited, and they're in danger.”
Bouldin says once endangered children are found, the goal is to connect them with aftercare through social service agencies and organizations to get them the help they need and help prevent them from running away again.
“What this tells us is if we can find 200, in this short time span, with the very, very limited resources that we have, how many more we could find if we had even more resources,” Bouldin said.