According to a new inspector general’s report, nearly one-third of illegal aliens released during the early months of the Biden Admin. failed to show up at required check-ins. The check-ins with immigration officials were a condition of the aliens’ release into the country; now, the Department of Homeland Security is reportedly having a hard time tracking all the aliens it’s releasing into the country’s interior.
Officials within the department blamed the sheer size of the crisis for their lack of oversight and inability to track the aliens they released. The IG report states that officials “were sacrificing record-keeping accuracy for the sake of speed in processing people,” reports the Washington Times.
According to the report, the failure to keep accurate records means names of family members who accompanied alien children were not always known - making reunification almost impossible later on. This is the same issue that plagued President Trump’s Administration during its “zero tolerance” practice in 2019.
“Despite the passage of two years and promises of improvements, the inspector general found the government still lacks a dedicated system to track the children’s movements from Homeland Security to the Health and Human Services Department, forcing officials to rely on emails,” reports the Washington Times.
The IG audit found:
This was a daunting task, considering more than 125,000 unaccompanied migrant children were transferred to HHS in FY 2021. Two DHS officials in the field responsible for transferring unaccompanied children stated they received upwards of 500 to 600 emails daily. Other officials noted receiving more than 50 emails per day — all to facilitate transfers.
Jim H. Crumpacker, DHS liaison to the inspector general, said in an official response to the new report, “DHS remains committed to improving the effectiveness of information technology systems used to track migrants from apprehension to release or transfer.”
In total, more than 1.6 million illegal aliens were encountered after crossing the border in FY2021, a whopping 314% increase compared to FY2020, all amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Despite legal crossers being forced to prove they had been vaccinated or had negative tests, illegal crossers frequently made it across the border and through processing without any testing, according to the IG report. “DHS does not require COVID testing, even prior to release into the United States,” the audit found.
Most importantly, the IG report challenged DHS’s promises that the millions of aliens released into the U.S. are following through on the conditions of their release. The Washington Times concludes,
The inspector general looked at nearly 112,000 migrants who were released between March and September 2021 under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s directive to exercise prosecutorial discretion. More than 32,000 of them — 29% — failed to show up for their first check-in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement within 60 days.
At the beginning of that period, the department often wasn’t recording addresses where migrants said they would go once they were released.
By late last year, 99% of released migrants did have addresses attached to their files — though the inspector general said the information was riddled with errors, such as migrants giving incomplete addresses or giving locations that duplicated other migrants.
You can read the full article here.
