- The claim that authorities in Florida rescued 163 missing children is still under investigation pending the release of more detailed information.
- The offices of Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Mark Glass said on Aug. 25, 2026, their agencies had made “46 recoveries by the Tampa Bay region, 41 by Miami, 32 by Jacksonville, 21 by Orlando, 12 by Fort Myers, 8 by Pensacola, and 3 by Tallahassee.”
- They said victims’ ages ranged from 2 months to 17 years. “Many recovered children had experienced various levels of abuse, neglect, exploitation, or exposure to other criminal activity, including human trafficking,” Uthmeier’s statement read.
- Florida prosecutor Rita Peters said the mix of children included runaways, indicating the authorities had not just targeted a single trafficking ring. Uthmeier announced three arrests had been made and more would come.
- Some posts about the operation claimed the children were recovered from underground cages. There was no evidence this was the case.
- Snopes will update this report if additional information surfaces. We have reached out to the FDLE seeking, specifically, the exact number of children who were trafficked, the number of children who were abused and sexually abused, the number of children abducted by one parent over custody battles, the number of runaways and whether further arrests were made in the days since the announcement. We await responses to these questions.
In August 2026, a claim spread that 163 missing children had been recovered in a statewide law enforcement operation in Florida.
The rumor appeared on Facebook and X. One post on X said the rescued children were “in underground cages with duct tape over their mouths from a human trafficking ring in Florida” (archived):
Several Snopes readers emailed, seeking to confirm the veracity of the claim.
It is true that the state’s Attorney General James Uthmeier and Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Mark Glass announced on Aug. 25, 2026, their agencies and others had cooperated in a statewide operation to rescue 163 missing children. They said three men had been arrested and more arrests were in the works. They said many of these children had been victims of abuse and trafficking, but did not specify how many.
Uthmeier’s office declined to comment further.
“Circumstances surrounding the recoveries in this operation include but are not limited to various levels of abuse, neglect, exploitation, or exposure to other types of criminal activity,” a spokesperson for FDLE said in an email. “There was no one singular trafficking organization identified as a main perpetrator, and most cases were unrelated to one another.”
We sent follow-up questions seeking, specifically, the exact number of children who were trafficked, the number of children who were abused and sexually abused, the number of children abducted by one parent over custody battles, the number of runaways and whether further arrests had been made in the days since the announcement.
We also asked why the task force would recover 163 children across the state in such a short period of time instead of tackling cases progressively, as children are reported missing. We will update this story should we receive a response.
On Aug. 25, Uthmeier and Glass spoke to reporters to announce the massive rescue operation:
“We are honored to announce that we have rescued 163 missing children in just a five-day operation,” Uthmeier said at the 5:21 mark. “This is incredible.”
Uthmeier added many of them had been abused, without specifying how many. “It won’t surprise you that many have suffered great abuses. Many appear to have been trafficked, neglected, exploited, and abused.”
“These children were a mix, as you’ve heard, of endangered, at-risk, and juvenile runaway cases,” Special Counsel to the Attorney General Rita Peters, who Uthmeier said was prosecuting the case, said during the news conference (at 20:15).
Peters then explained the distinction was less important than it seemed, as runaways often become exploited by adults who take advantage of their situation:
Victimization of a child rarely begins with an abduction. It begins with a child who has left home or or has been pushed out of one, who has no money and nowhere to sleep, and who often meets an adult offering food, shelter, and much needed attention. These children often leave because being on the street is better than being with their abusive parent or their guardians who sell them on a daily basis.
In the statement published on Uthmeier’s website, his office said the victims’ ages ranged from 2 months to 17 years. During the news conference, Uthmeier also said three men had been arrested on various counts, including, per his office’s statement, lewd and lascivious acts with a minor, lewd and lascivious battery on a victim 12 to 16 years old, and interference in a child custody case. In other words, there was no indication the operation targeted one specific child trafficking ring.
Authorities did not give any indication the children had been found in underground cages with their mouths duct-taped, as some social media posts claimed.
The attorney general’s statement said the operation took the Florida task force to “Alabama, California, Ohio, New York, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, and Tennessee. Outside of the US included Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Dominica, Finland, Ghana, Guatemala, Italy, Jamaica, Mexico, Spain, and Taiwan.” We inquired about the international aspect of this operation in our email to the FDLE.
For further reading, Snopes investigated a claim that children were being sold on the secondhand sales platform Vinted.
