DHS Refuses To Disclose Number Of Illegals Let Go After Interacting With Border Agents

The Biden Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has refused to release monthly totals on how many illegal immigrants are allowed into the United States following encounters by US authorities at the border, according to Just the News, citing a former US immigration judge.

Retired judge Andrew Arthur, who served for eight years at the now-closed immigration court in York, Pennsylvania, told JTN that Homeland Security does keep track of the total number of migrants released following encounters, however making that data available to the public would be ‘problematic’ for the Biden administration.

“The only reason why ICE and OFO [Office of Field Operations] would refuse to disclose that information is to hide the fact that it is releasing more than 100,000 aliens per month into the United States, and to conceal the effects of those migrant releases on communities across the United States,” said Arthur.

Arthur also said that DHS should be required to release the information the same way that the monthly data on encounters of illegal immigrants is posted online. 

Arthur also said the “monthly court-ordered disclosures in Texas v. Biden,” the lawsuit over the Remain in Mexico policy, demonstrated DHS “can provide the American people with statistics on the tens of thousands of illegal entrants that CBP encounters at the southwest border whom DHS releases” into the U.S. The agency has “refused to do so since those orders were vacated in August 2022,” Arthur explained. -Just the News

Arthur also explained that OFO “publishes statistics on the number of aliens its officers encounter at the ports monthly who are placed into removal proceedings with the filing of a ‘Notice to Appear’ (NTA), but separate monthly disclosure lines on the number of those aliens who are released or alternatively are detained are blank—reading ‘0’ across the months. That is a legal and factual impossibility, because those aliens are either released or detained—there is no third option.”

As JTN further educates us, US immigration judges – formerly known as “special inquiry officers,” aren’t actually part of the federal judiciary at all. Instead, they’re DOJ employees who report to the Attorney General.

According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Biden administration isn’t being transparent with the public, and should be “required to release all pertinent information to the public,” a spokesman told Just the News. “It should be done as a matter of course because the public has a right to know. But if it requires an act of Congress, then so be it.”

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) told JTN that the number of released migrants should be reported to Congress on a daily basis, and “obvious why the Biden Admin does everything it can to minimize transparency.”

ICE publishes monthly statistics on the number of migrants CBP transfers to its custody as well as the number of aliens ICE itself releases monthly, “but it fails to disclose how many of the aliens it releases monthly” were originally encountered at the southwest border and “transferred to ICE are released monthly,” Arthur also said.  

“When ICE was under a court order in Texas, it did release that information, so it plainly keeps the statistics,” he added. -Just the News

According to a “conservative” estimate by FAIR, at least 2.3 million illegal immigrants had entered the US “either because they were released by CBP, or they eluded apprehension.”

“This is a conservative estimate on FAIR’s part based on verifiable data. The report does not speculate about numbers that cannot be verified,” the spokesperson told JTN.