ICE Frees Hundreds of Criminals to Make Room for Migrants; Biden Goes Easy on Quick Removals; Border Patrol Clears Way for More Migrant Releases to City Streets, Sources Say: ‘The dam is about to break’

ICE frees hundreds of criminals to make room for migrants; Biden goes easy on quick removals:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been releasing illegal immigrants, including those with criminal records, from custody to clear space for the looming surge of more migrants at the border, in the latest sign of the government’s scramble to prepare for the onslaught.

ICE cut its detention population to fewer than 23,000 at the start of the month, down from more than 28,000 six weeks earlier. That includes hundreds of people with criminal records whom ICE has released.

Acting ICE Director Tae Johnson told Congress last month that he wanted to cut the population to as few as 21,000 people to leave plenty of space to accommodate the border chaos as the administration gives up its Title 42 pandemic expulsion power Thursday night.

Mr. Johnson said he would try to release mostly non-criminals but some criminals could be put back on the streets to make room. He said any criminals released would be “very low-level criminals.”

ICE didn’t respond Tuesday to a request for comment, but it said in data published in late April that it had released more than 800 immigrants with criminal convictions last month on top of 1,410 in March. Most of those were discretionary releases.

That’s just one of the ways the Department of Homeland Security is confronting the coming surge of illegal immigrants and the conundrum of where to put them all. —>READ MORE HERE

Border Patrol clears way for more migrant releases to city streets, sources say: ‘The dam is about to break’:

The Biden administration’s top border officials in Washington, D.C., have decided to authorize all Border Patrol sectors to begin “safe” mass releases of migrants to city streets if non-governmental organizations don’t have the capacity to hold them, multiple sources tell Fox News.

The consequence of this decision is that migrants will be mass released at bus stops, gas stations, supermarkets and in towns and cities across the border as Customs and Border Protection facilities are already over capacity in multiple sectors, according to CBP sources who were not authorized to speak publicly.

NGOs are quickly approaching their limits to house migrants and tens of thousands more migrants are expected to surge into the United States once the Title 42 public health order is lifted on May 11. The city of El Paso, Texas has already seen thousands of migrants camped out on the sidewalks.

The mass releases will only happen if NGOs run out of space, but officials believe that is likely. Officials have made 26,000 apprehensions and seen over 7,000 “gotaways” in just 72 hours, according to Border Patrol. That comes ahead of the end of the Title 42 public health order on Thursday, which is expected to be accompanied by an even bigger wave of migration on top of the already overwhelming numbers authorities are seeing.

“The dam is about to break,” one Border Patrol source said.

Title 42 has been used since 2020 by both the Trump and Biden administration to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants quickly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In March, nearly half of all migrant encounters ended in a Title 42 expulsion. The order will end on May 11 along with the COVID-19 national emergency. —>READ MORE HERE

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