DHS to Release Illegal Immigrants Ahead of New Border Surge; Biden Admin Predicts New Illegal Immigrant ‘surge’ Next Month as Pandemic’s Border Restrictions Fade

DHS to release illegal immigrants ahead of new border surge:

ICE chief says he needed more detention beds than Biden gave him

The Department of Homeland Security is far short on detention space and will have to release illegal immigrants to prepare for a surge of newcomers at the border next month, the country’s deportation chief told Congress on Tuesday.

Tae Johnson, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said he had sought thousands more detention beds in the agency’s new budget, but higher-ups in the Biden administration rejected that idea.

Now, he’ll face the looming border surge with a maximum of 34,000 detention beds. And in reality, he can’t even fill all of those because of coronavirus restrictions.

The result is that he’ll have to release people, Mr. Johnson told the House Appropriations Committee. He said he hopes to speed up deportations to cut into the number of detainees, and will try to limit releases to people with lower-level criminal records.

“Most of the folks we are releasing from custody will not have a criminal history,” Mr. Johnson assured lawmakers.

That was cold comfort to Rep. Dave Joyce, Ohio Republican and chairman of the subcommittee that oversees ICE’s funding. He pointed out that the U.S. doesn’t have access to criminal histories from many other countries.

We don’t have access to many of those countries’ records,” Mr. Johnson said.

The cuts have already started. As of last month, ICE was holding more than 28,000 migrants on any given day, but that dropped to 25,542 as of this week.

Mr. Johnson told the House Appropriations Committee in testimony Tuesday that he wants to get that figure down to about 21,000 so they have space for the worst cases among the expected new arrivals. —>READ MORE HERE

Biden admin predicts new illegal immigrant ‘surge’ next month as pandemic’s border restrictions fade:

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas acknowledged Tuesday that the conditions along the southern border will deteriorate next month when the government’s Title 42 pandemic authority to immediately expel illegal border crossers disappears, but told a congressional hearing that his department is working to adapt to the changed conditions.

Mr. Mayorkas did not offer specific numbers on border traffic, but a projection last year, ahead of a previous deadline for ending Title 42, said that as many as 18,000 illegal immigrants could cross per day.

That would be nearly triple the amount that arrived each day in March.

“We do anticipate a surge in the number of encounters,” Mr. Mayorkas told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Title 42 is the public health law invoked by the Trump administration at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — and retained by the Biden administration — that allows U.S. border agents to deny individuals entrance into the country in order to “prevent [the] spread of communicable disease.”

He said the department’s goal is to shift some of the illegal immigrants to new ways of entering. They would still be illegally present in the U.S., though they would not be sneaking in between the designated ports of entry. ––>READ MORE HERE

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