Police have found a 12-year-old Texas girl missing for more than a week

(CNN) — Imini Hughes, a missing 12-year-old girl from the Houston area, has been found unharmed, police said. In a post on x

Last seen on February 22, Houston police issued an Amber Alert on Wednesday saying they believe she may have been trafficked.

In their post, police said she was found in Columbus, Texas, 117 kilometers from the Houston area where she disappeared.

FBI Houston posted on X: “FBI Houston is proud to help rescue another missing child. Two children recovered in two days,” and confirmed to CNN that they helped search for Imini.

Police have not released any other information and said the investigation is ongoing.

A Houston police spokesperson told CNN on Wednesday that when Hughes first disappeared on February 22, she was believed to have been alone. But police received new information, which led them to believe she may have been trafficked, a police spokesman said.

Police did not say what led them to suspect that the girl had been trafficked.

According to an Amber Alert, Imini was last seen leaving in a dark-colored four-door Dodge pickup truck around 1:40 a.m. local time. He went missing in Missouri City, which is within the Houston metropolitan area, police said Thursday morning.

Houston police said in a post Thursday that Imini may be on a social media app known as Tagged. The social network “focuses on connecting people to make friends or date through features like Browse, Find Me and Live,” according to the platform’s website.

Tagged’s parent company, The Meat Group, told CNN that they had contacted Houston authorities to help with the case.

“Our terms and conditions prohibit minors from using our apps, and we use technology and manual analysis to help detect minors who have registered on our platform using an incorrect age,” the company said. “If we are aware of any attempts to circumvent our process, we thoroughly investigate any reports involving a potential minor user or child exploitation.”

Police did not elaborate on what role the child’s possible presence on Tagged may have played in the investigation.

The mother says she woke up and her daughter was gone

The girl’s mother, Shannon Williams, told CNN affiliate KPRC that she last saw her daughter Thursday before going to sleep, but when she woke up, she was gone.

E’minie is believed to have only an Android tablet, along with the clothes she was wearing, the mother told KPRC.

Williams told the outlet that he did not know if Imini had been communicating with anyone online. The mother said the girl had gone for a walk a few hours before she went missing.

Williams told CNN affiliate KHOU that in their last conversation, E’minie asked her mother to wake her up early for school the next day.

According to a 2023 press release from the Department of Justice, approximately 460,000 children go missing in the United States each year. About 1 in 6 of the more than 28,800 cases of missing children reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2023 were victims of child trafficking, according to the nonprofit. Last year, the center received more than 18,400 reports of possible child trafficking.

Holly Priebe Sotelo, a professor of social work at the University of Southern California, told CNN that it’s important for parents to maintain “open communication” with others, especially those they know, to establish healthy relationships and boundaries with their children.

“It’s impossible for parents to keep up with the latest threats,” Sotelo said. “Therefore, parents need to start a dialogue with their children every day about setting healthy limits.”

CNN’s Colin Jeffrey and David Williams contributed to this report.