Nearly 50,000 illegal immigrants caught and released by the Biden administration have gone missing during President Joe Biden’s first year in office, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., released the data this week, slamming Biden’s immigration policies as an “abysmal failure.”
More than 47,000 illegal immigrants released from Border Patrol custody at the southern border between March 21, 2021 and Aug. 31, 2021 have failed to report back to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the report says.
“ICE might not be properly assessing these illegal aliens before releasing them into the interior of the U.S.,” Johnson wrote in an October letter to DHS. “If true, ICE’s reported actions could threaten the safety and security of all Americans.
“These numbers, which may be even higher, underscore this administration’s failure to enact policies to secure the border and has created an unprecedented migration crisis,” Johnson wrote.
Under the Trump administration, illegal immigrants caught by officials were immediately deported. But Biden reinstated the failed “catch-and-release” policy, which allows immigration officials to release illegals into the country instead of deporting them with the hope that they will report back to ICE or Border Patrol.
Biden has also been trying to gut Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which allowed immigration agents to send migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. back to Mexico to await their court hearings.
The court system, however, has upheld “Remain in Mexico” several times, ordering the Biden administration to reinstate it.
Biden’s Department of Homeland Security “claims the power to implement a massive policy reversal — affecting billions of dollars and countless people — simply by typing out a new Word document and posting it on the internet,” the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled recently.
“No input from Congress, no ordinary rulemaking procedures, and no judicial review,” the judges wrote. “DHS has come nowhere close to shouldering its heavy burden to show that it can make law in a vacuum.”
Two other courts upheld “Remain in Mexico”: In August, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ordered DHS to reinstate it, blasting the White House for not fully considering the consequences of its removal. And the U.S. Supreme Court later upheld that decision.
