ICE Officers Urged to Ease Up on Criminal Arrests Ahead of Expected Border Surge; ICE Told to Stand Down in Advance of Post-Title 42 Onslaught

ICE officers urged to ease up on criminal arrests ahead of expected border surge:

Some ICE officers have been told to cut down on arrests of even serious criminals to free up detention bed space so the government has somewhere to put illegal immigrants caught at the border, The Washington Times has learned.

The guidance does not appear to be nationwide but was delivered to agents in at least some field offices of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

One officer on the East Coast said ICE officers had been told to focus their arrests on class A felons — the worst of the worst. That leaves plenty of other bad actors outside the arrest aperture

“We are being told to abandon detention of anyone without a class A felony like murder in preparation for border flights,” the officer said.

It is the latest signal that the government is scrambling to try to accommodate what it expects to be a surge once the administration ends the pandemic Title 42 policy that allows some illegal immigrants at the border to be quickly ousted.

ICE said in a statement that no such orders have come from on high. —>READ MORE HERE

ICE Told to Stand Down in Advance of Post-Title 42 Onslaught:

We shouldn’t have to choose between criminal aliens on the streets or criminal migrants at the borders

On December 12, the Washington Times reported that ICE officers have been directed to limit the number of arrests that they are making, to free up detention beds for an anticipated post-Title 42 onslaught at the Southwest border. The American people — citizens and lawful immigrants alike — should not have to choose between dangerous criminal aliens on their streets or dangerous criminal migrants and terrorists at their borders.

Title 42, in Brief. The phrase “Title 42” refers to a series of orders issued by CDC pursuant to Title 42 of the U.S. Code in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Those Title 42 orders direct the expulsion of illegal migrants at the borders to stem the introduction and spread of the novel coronavirus.

The first of those orders was issued during the Trump administration on March 20, 2020, when the global pandemic was declared, but CDC has reissued those orders several times thereafter (with amendments and modifications), well into the Biden administration.

Although the Title 42 CDC expulsion orders are mandatory, DHS implemented them much more vigorously under Trump than it has under Biden.

More than 87 percent of illegal Southwest border migrants subject to Title 42 were expelled during the Trump administration, a figure that dropped to around 58 percent between February and September 2021. Expulsions further declined in FY 2022, as fewer than 48 percent of the more than 2.2 million illegal migrants apprehended at the Southwest border last fiscal year were expelled under Title 42.

The Oversized Importance of Title 42. Those Title 42 orders are not immigration- or border-related per se, but rather are health-related. Still, they have taken on oversized importance when it comes to border security under the Biden administration. —>READ MORE HERE

Source