GOP lawmaker have called on the Department of Homeland Security to publicly disclose monthly totals of illegal migrants released into U.S. after interdiction. According to a report by Just The News, the agency “is deliberately not releasing the monthly totals of all illegal migrants who wind up getting released into the U.S. after they are encountered by U.S. authorities at the border.”
Andrew Arthur, who served for eight years as an immigration judge at the now-closed immigration court in York, Pennsylvania, told Just the News that DHS does track the total number of migrants released after an encounter with border agents, but making that data available to the public would paint the Biden Administration in a negative light.
“The only reason why ICE and OFO [Office of Field Operations] would refuse to disclose that information is to hide the fact that it is releasing more than 100,000 aliens per month into the United States, and to conceal the effects of those migrant releases on communities across the United States,” he said.
Arthur also said that DHS should be required to release the information the same way that the monthly data on encounters of illegal immigrants is posted online.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which describes itself as “a non-partisan, public interest organization” with more than three million diverse members and supporters, said that the Biden administration is not being transparent with the public about how many migrants without U.S. legal status are being released into the U.S.
DHS should be “required to release all pertinent information to the public,” a spokesperson for FAIR told Just the News. “It should be done as a matter of course because the public has a right to know. But if it requires an act of Congress, then so be it.”
In June, FAIR estimated that at least 2.3 million illegal migrants had entered the U.S. “either because they were released by CBP, or they eluded apprehension,” according to a spokesperson for the group.
“This is a conservative estimate on FAIR’s part based on verifiable data. The report does not speculate about numbers that cannot be verified,” the spokesperson said.
