(Bethany Blankley, The Center Square) Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody made public an ICE training video obtained by her office as part of the litigation process in a lawsuit the state filed against the Biden administration in September.
The partially redacted video, she said, is “evidence of President Joe Biden’s intentional destruction of the nation’s immigration system.”
“Since day one of his administration, President Biden has purposefully broken down the structure and law enforcement at our nation’s border with Mexico—all while confusing and misleading the nation about this devious, reckless scheme,” she said.
“If Title 42 ends, the administration may blame the mass surge of unvetted migrants on this rule’s remission, but don’t be fooled,” she continued. “They’re playing fast and loose with the lives of Americans to advance an absurd political agenda.”
Title 42 is a Trump-era public health policy that allowed border agents to immediately expel some illegal crossers over concerns they could spread COVID-19. The Biden administration planned to end enforcement of Title 42 on Wednesday but that’s been put on hold by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“As our litigation uncovered, this has been this administration’s plan all along. They’ve let in and lost track of hundreds of thousands of inadmissible immigrants, and it will get worse if Title 42 expires,” Moody said. “We will continue our litigation efforts to force Biden to follow the law and try to mitigate this national disaster.”
The ICE training videos describe the logistical problems resulting from BP agents releasing illegal foreign nationals into the U.S. without charging documents. Without a charging document, it becomes nearly impossible for ICE agents in the future to locate and remove people in the U.S. illegally.
Excerpts from the redacted training videos include a male official explaining that since March 2021, CBP officials released noncitizens at the border “under prosecutorial discretion or humanitarian parole directing them to report to the nearest ICE office where they intend to reside.
“This process does not address the underlining challenges regarding ICE’s congressionally-mandated responsibility to locate, arrest and place into removal proceedings those noncitizens who are not in possession of a valid, unexpired entry document,” the official continued. “Under Operation Horizon, ICE law enforcement officers will identify, locate and place into removal proceedings those noncitizens who CBP released into the United States after March 15, 2021.”
On how Operation Horizon has been conducted, another ICE official said, “you know over the summer, we had well over 150,000 folks come in. They were issued a piece of paper that said, ‘find somebody in ICE,’ and that was pretty much it. There was no processing. I know this isn’t something that you guys asked for, and I can assure you that no one in the criminal alien program asked for it either.”
