Illegal Border Crossings Today:

Immigration report header

93% of Illegal Aliens, Not Immediately Removed Under Title 42, Were Released Into the U.S.

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On countless occasions, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has insisted – including in sworn testimony – that his department is faithfully carrying out the border security laws it is charged with enforcing. The Inspector General (IG) of his department says otherwise. A report released by the IG in September indicates that between March 2021 and August 2022, 93 percent of illegal aliens apprehended by the Border Patrol, and not immediately expelled under Title 42 which was still in place during that period, were released into the United States. 

The data on illegal aliens released into the country was uncovered in a report that focused on how the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have failed to secure valid mailing addresses for the illegal aliens released into the U.S. The crux of the report is that our immigration agencies can’t enforce our laws and ensure illegal aliens are removed if they can’t locate the aliens they release. According to the report, DHS has lost (or never had) track of 177,000 illegal migrants they released. 

Collecting valid mailing addresses is critical (assuming that the current DHS leadership has any interest in removing them). Still, according to the IG, the Border Patrol, in tens of thousands of instances, either never collected any address, collected a non-residential mailing address (such as a restaurant, a church, a charity, etc.), or collected an invalid mailing address, i.e. not a real address whatsoever. 

Here is what the IG found. Between March 2021 and August 2022 (18 months), the Border Patrol apprehended approximately 1.3 million illegal aliens at the southern border. This number excludes those who were expelled to Mexico under Title 42 authority. It also excludes unaccompanied alien minors, who by law must be released to the custody of Health and Human Services. Thus, the 1.3 million represents single adult illegal aliens and family units apprehended by the Border Patrol at the southwest border. 

Of this 1.3 million, the IG revealed that: 

  • Border Patrol released 430,000 illegal aliens on their own recognizance (i.e. without conditions or surveillance) with a Notice to Appear (NTA) in immigration court; 
  • Border Patrol released 318,000 illegal aliens with parole and placed them in the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program, which usually requires a minimal amount of tracking and reporting; 
  • Border Patrol released 95,000 illegal aliens with a Notice to Report, which means they were not issued an NTA and were simply told to report to an ICE office when they reached their final destinations; and 
  • ICE released 370,000 of the illegal aliens apprehended by the Border Patrol (without specifying the legal authority used for the release). 

So, in total, of the 1.3 million illegal aliens apprehended by the Border Patrol, 1.213 million or 93 percent were released into the United States. Breaking it down, Border Patrol released 843,000, or 65 percent of the total. ICE released 370,000, or 28 percent. While these numbers are staggering, the number of illegal aliens released into the U.S. during this period of time is surely higher if one included the number of aliens released by the Office of Field Operations, which staffs the official ports of entry. Those numbers were not set forth in this report. Nor does it include the Biden administration’s flagrant abuse of humanitarian parole, which is supposed to be granted on a case-by-case basis. By some estimates, 1.4 million inadmissible aliens have been paroled into the United States since President Biden took office.