The Biden administration has cut detentions of illegal immigrants despite the historic surge across the border, and it is relying more on ankle bracelets to monitor migrants despite reports they don’t work.
Syracuse University’s Transactional Research Access Clearinghouse, which charts federal immigration statistics, said that just 20,623 illegal immigrants are being detained, down from 22,000, raising questions from critics about where thousands of other border-crossers are.
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An Arizona Sun Times report quoted the mayor of Yuma saying that just 1% of those nabbed by border agents are being deported.
The university said that a record number have been placed in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “alternatives to detention” program, which uses ankle bracelets to track movement.
“The number of immigrants enrolled in ICE’s ‘Alternatives to Detention’ (ATD) program, which monitors immigrants through a variety of technologies outside of detention, exceeded 150,000 for the first time in December,” said the TRAC system.
That prompted critics of the administration to raise new concerns about how illegal immigrants are being handled and if they are just being let go.
“The historical data clearly shows any alternative to detention has been a colossal failure,” said Mark A. Morgan, former acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“Without the ability of ICE to detain an illegal alien while they go through their immigration proceedings, is simply a continuation of catch and release. An ankle monitor does nothing to deter an illegal alien from absconding in defiance of a court order of removal. This is yet another intentional self-inflicted action by this administration to incentivize illegal immigration and further reduce ICE’s ability to enforce the law,” he told Secrets.
Jessica M. Vaughan, the director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, said the new data suggest that the administration is continuing to turn its attention away from the border crisis.
“First of all, it’s concerning that the number of people in ICE detention is declining. Here we are in the midst of a protracted border crisis, with consistently record-breaking numbers of illegal border-crossers, and the number of detainees is declining? It should be going up. The Biden administration has been told by a federal court that they need to either send people to Mexico to await hearings or detain them, and they are obviously doing neither,” Vaughan told Secrets.
And she criticized the surge in alternative detention methods like the ankle bracelets.
“We know from studies and experience that ATD is expensive and doesn’t work. A large number will simply cut off the bracelets and disappear or fail to check-in by phone or in person. The vast majority of these cases have no valid claim for asylum and in all likelihood will stop complying with the monitoring when they fail to get legal status,” she said.
Vaughan added, “We will never be told the outcome — how many skip out, how many are denied asylum, how many are ever removed. We’ve seen this movie before; it’s an expensive joke on the taxpayers and a boondoggle for all the NGOs who are paid to counsel and support these frivolous asylum-seekers. Instead of monitoring these cases, they should be refused entry or detained with swift due process and removal back home. That is the only way to address this abuse of the asylum system.”
