U.S. Marshals announced Monday that a monthlong operation across Ohio located 79 children who had been reported missing or endangered, in what the agency called the largest missing-child recovery effort in the state’s history.
Operation Meridian ran through August and focused on children between the ages of 6 and 17 who had open missing-person cases in Ohio. The Marshals Service worked with federal, state and local law enforcement partners in cities including Akron, Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo. Officials said the children had gone missing under a range of circumstances, including suspected sex trafficking, physical and emotional abuse, neglect and running away from home.
Among the cases highlighted by investigators, Marshals in southern Ohio worked with the Columbus Police Department to find two sisters, ages 13 and 16, who had been missing since July 2024 and April 2026. The 13-year-old was found hidden in a crawlspace beneath the floor of a bedroom closet at a home in Lockbourne, a small community south of Columbus. Officials did not release additional details about the circumstances of her confinement, citing the ongoing nature of the case.
What happens to the children now?
Marshals said recovered children are turned over to local child protective services or reunited with parents and guardians, depending on the circumstances of each case, and that some recoveries have led to separate criminal investigations into the adults involved. The Ohio Attorney General’s Office has said families in the state reported more than 15,000 children missing last year, a figure officials cited as context for the scale of the operation.
Operation Meridian follows a similar multiagency sweep in Florida in August, in which authorities said they recovered 163 missing children in a five-day operation described as the largest of its kind in that state’s history. The Ohio effort adds to a string of large-scale recovery operations conducted by the Marshals Service and its partners in 2026, though officials have not announced whether another state-level sweep is planned next.
The Marshals Service credited local police departments, sheriff’s offices and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children with contributing tips and resources to the operation. Investigators said several of the recoveries stemmed from leads developed during the search for other children, allowing teams to track down siblings or acquaintances who were also reported missing.
Ohio has run similar large-scale recovery efforts before. In an earlier operation known as Operation Autumn Hope, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said law enforcement recovered 45 missing children in what was described at the time as the state’s largest anti-human-trafficking effort. Officials say Operation Meridian surpassed that total by more than 30 children, underscoring how quickly the scale of these sweeps has grown in less than a year.
Sources: U.S. Marshals Service · Local 12 Cincinnati · Cleveland 19 News
