Audit Finds Staffing Gaps Hobble Federal Unit on Missing Native Cases

A federal audit has found that chronic staffing problems have hampered the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Missing and Murdered Unit since it was set up in 2021, leaving a backlog of cases and families without the victim services they are entitled to.

The review by the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General, released on Sept. 9, examined the unit created to tackle violence against Native Americans and to direct new resources toward cold cases. It found that nearly half of the unit's positions were still vacant as of last year, even as the bureau as a whole has shed about a third of its workforce amid staffing cuts under President Donald Trump.

Federal spending on the initiative rose from $12 million to $17 million between 2021 and 2024. Over the same period, auditors found, 39% of the unit's funding was redirected to other Bureau of Indian Affairs law enforcement costs, including vehicle upgrades.

As of November 2024, the unit had 83 open cases and close to 400 pending referrals, with no set timeframe for assessing them, according to the audit. Agents were carrying unmanageable caseloads and some were also assigned administrative work, such as researching referrals, on top of active investigations.

In 8 of 13 cases reviewed by the inspector general's office, the assigned agent did not contact bureau staff who specialize in helping victims' families. One staff member said families were referred to outside programs because the unit had only two victim specialists nationwide.

The consequences are felt by families still searching for answers. Peter Martin, 31, was reported missing after a welfare check on the Fond Du Lac reservation in Minnesota in 2024. Relatives described him as an outgoing man who played sports with children and took his nieces and nephews trick-or-treating. His family says the investigation has stalled since the agent assigned to the case left the role in early 2025.

"They've never had a person take his space for this region and yeah, we haven't heard from them since," said family friend Kayla Jackson.

Family members said they receive periodic updates from the Fond Du Lac Police Department but were never connected to bureau victim specialists. The bureau's website does not list a case agent for Martin.

Similar frustrations surround the case of Kaysera Stops Pretty Places, who had just turned 18 when her body was found in a town bordering the Crow Reservation in 2019. Her relatives were hopeful when an agent was assigned to the still-unsolved case in 2022, but her aunt, Grace Bulltail, said the agent was difficult to reach and offered few updates. Last year, Bulltail learned the agent had never obtained full access to local investigators' files before being reassigned to other duties.

"It is nothing but heartbreaking just to see how inadequate the response has already been for so many of these situations," said David Adams, an Albuquerque-based attorney, former federal prosecutor and member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians.

Sarah Deer, a professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, said the delays compound families' grief. "These are families who have often experienced institutional failure already," she said. "A system designed as a response to that history cannot ask families to keep waiting."

The bureau said it has adopted many of the audit's recommendations, from streamlining its case referral pipeline to training staff on victim services requirements, and that most recommendations had been acted upon. In a statement, officials said the deficiencies identified in the audit reflected operations under the previous administration that were inconsistent with the objectives of Operation Lady Justice, a task force established during the first Trump administration in 2019.

Federal auditors, however, say weaknesses in the bureau's hiring process remain. The Trump administration says it has been ramping up efforts to address high rates of violence against Native people, and last month the FBI announced a minimum reward of $25,000 for public information in dozens of cold cases on tribal land. In February, the Missing and Murdered Unit helped recover and identify two sets of remains on the Chickasaw Nation, closing a missing persons case that had gone cold more than a decade earlier.

Deer said new federal and state task forces and specialized law enforcement initiatives have raised public awareness of the crisis, but added that tribal police departments, often the first to respond to cases involving Native people, remain under-resourced and limited in their capacity to investigate complex crimes.

"What I always come back to is whether or not this money could be better utilized by tribes themselves," she said.