Among the recommendations of the Not Invisible Act Commission were specific protections for foster youth, who end up lost at higher rates than their peers.
The commission titled its report Not One More and detailed calls to action for multiple federal agencies — including the Departments of Justice and the Interior, Health and Human Services and the Administration for Children and Families. This year, legislators and policymakers were supposed to establish ways to better track the missing, and step up efforts to find them.
But on Feb. 18, the 212-page, comprehensive set of findings and recommendations that 41 commissioners worked on for three years suddenly vanished from the U.S. Department of Justice website.
“I don’t know who’s going to carry the recommendations out,” said Kristin Welch, a Menominee Nation descendant and Not Invisible Act commissioner. Welch, founder and executive director of the Wisconsin-based Waking Women Healing Institute, reflected the doubts among many that life-saving measures may now be suspended.
“The report being removed doesn’t inspire hope under this administration that the work is going to continue and be meaningful,” she said.
The Not Invisible Act Commission report is one of countless previously public documents that have suddenly been taken down from federal websites since the Jan. 20 inauguration of President Donald Trump. In his first month in office alone, thousands of government web pages were removed, a New York Times analysis found — including vital information related to many aspects of American life, from health and safety to veterans affairs, taxes and scientific findings.
The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment about why the Not Invisible report had been taken down, or whether the agency would move forward with the recommendations relevant to the department.“It’s a really big slap in the face to our relatives. We’ve seen it so many times by the federal government: this constant erasure, with no respect for our relatives, their pain and their trauma.”
— Kristin Welch, report commissioner
Bringing the invisible to light
According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Indigenous youth are more likely than non-Native American kids to go missing from foster care. In a report examining a recent decade of data, the center documented nearly 3,000 such cases, 99% of which were ultimately resolved. But while the kids were off the radar, they were identified as “endangered” — more likely to be engaging in risky behavior, struggling with mental illness and turning to drugs and alcohol.
Trump signed the Not Invisible Act in October 2020, during his first term.
In 2024, under President Joe Biden, top officials praised the intent of the act they said would “resolve this longstanding crisis and support healing from the generational traumas that Indigenous peoples have endured in the United States.”
Then-Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland underscored the issue.
“Addressing violent crimes against Indigenous peoples has long been underfunded and ignored, as a cause of intergenerational trauma that has affected our communities since colonization,” Haaland said in a press statement. “Through historic efforts like the Not Invisible Act Commission, we’re identifying recommendations created by Indian Country, for Indian Country. This will ensure that epidemics like the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Crisis and Human Trafficking are addressed with the resources they demand.”
In its report, the commission called for the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct a study of American Indian and Alaska Native children missing from foster care and determine whether law enforcement is doing everything possible to find them. The department also “must mandate that any foster care agencies receiving federal funding report immediately any missing Tribal juvenile to their corresponding Tribe,” it reported.
It also recommended that the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), a division of Health and Human Services, “develop and disseminate culturally appropriate, trauma-informed prevention programming” to keep runaways from becoming victims of trafficking, violence or the criminal justice system. Further, it stated Congress “must appropriate funding to the ACF, which must integrate training on human trafficking, survival sex work, and intergenerational trauma.”
“Human traffickers prey on the vulnerable, often people who are young, homeless or in foster care,” the commissioners wrote. “There must be outreach and help to interrupt this pattern.”
The Biden administration’s plan brought together tribes, federal agencies, law enforcement, social service providers, survivors and the relatives of Native people who’ve been trafficked, gone missing or were murdered — and plotted better coordination and support.
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