From the New York Times:

‘Lost’ Immigrant Children? That’s a Different Story

By Ron Nixon

May 31, 2018

In late May, I woke to a growing buzz online about a story I’d written. …

Interest in my article was revived by a misunderstanding: It was read as evidence that children had arrived at the border with their parents, were separated from them by the Department of Homeland Security and then lost in government bureaucracy. …

So what happened? The report had been about the federal government’s inability to locate nearly 1,500 children who had been placed with sponsors after the kids showed up alone at the border. But somehow, that story had been conflated with another: the Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy at the border intended to deter new migrants with the threat of jail sentences. Migrant parents who are referred for criminal prosecution will be separated from their children. …

I’ve had articles misinterpreted before …

In this case, I’m not sure what happened. But here’s an educated guess: Several days before my story ran, my colleague Caitlin Dickerson discovered that the Trump administration had taken more than 700 children from adults claiming to be their parents since October, including more than 100 children under the age of 4. …

It was also National Missing Children’s Day, first proclaimed by President Ronald Reagan in 1983. That fact, merged with an inaccurate tale of children being ripped from their parents’ arms, created a perfect social-media storm that soon spilled over into television and talk radio. CNN, NBC and CBS all broadcast stories, and network reporters did their best to try to unravel the confusion about the two separate issues. But the story about children taken from parents and “lost” continued to grow online — to the point that prominent political figures such as Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont weighed in …