Nine months after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General expressed alarm that under the Biden administration, DHS agencies couldn’t locate where illegal foreign nationals were after they released them into the U.S., ongoing problems persist and terrorism threats are heightened.
Last September, the DHS OIG released a redacted report stating that DHS “does not have assurance that all migrants can be located once they are released into the United States.”
It conducted an audit over a 17-month period when DHS released more than 1.3 million foreign nationals into the U.S. after they illegally entered through the southwest border.
Of the 981,671 Border Patrol records evaluated from March 2021 through August 2022, addresses for more than 177,000 foreign nationals, or nearly 20%, “were either missing, invalid for delivery, or not legitimate residential locations,” it found.
The OIG also found that during this period, Border Patrol agents released 430,000 illegal foreign nationals into the U.S. on their own recognizance with Notice to Appear documents to go before an immigration judge. They released nearly 95,000 with Notice to Report documents to go to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office and more than 318,000 through a new Parole Plus Alternatives to Detention (Parole + ATD) program.
Under the Biden administration, instead of being processed for removal, foreign nationals deemed inadmissible were granted Parole + ATD and released into the U.S. They were also tracked with electronic devices either through wearing ankle bracelets or being given smartphones “intended to ensure compliance with release conditions, court hearings, and final orders of removal,” the report notes.
Prior to releasing them, federal agents are required to vet them to ensure they don’t have a criminal record and aren’t connected to countries of foreign concern or terrorist organizations. Federal agents are also required to obtain an address of where they are going in order to enforce federal immigration law.
The OIG found that DHS agencies had “limited ability” to accurately and effectively track them. Border Patrol “cannot always obtain and does not always record migrant addresses” and ICE “does not always validate migrant addresses prior to their release.”
