Attorney General Jeff Sessions admitted Wednesday that the Justice Department and federal immigration officials are facing significant hurdles in trying to end the immigration practice known as “catch and release.”
Republicans have long complained about the federal policy that involves detaining illegal immigrants and then releasing them in the hope that they would turn up for their immigration court hearing. Thousands never showed up, which led the Trump administration in February to say they would move to immediately return those illegal immigrants to their home countries.
Despite that change, however, Sessions said the reality is that the government is being overwhelmed with the number of illegal immigrants still coming in, which is why catch and release is still effectively happening.
“It’s not the policy, it’s just the reality that there is so many people claiming and being entitled to hearings that we don’t have the ability to provide those hearings, and they’re being released into the community and they’re not coming back for their hearings,” Sessions told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“It’s still unacceptable,” he said.
Sessions said there was a backlog of 300,000 immigration cases in 2011, and now that number is “over 600,000.”
Sessions said his department was examining what solutions his department might have “short of [requiring] legislation,” but went on to add that filling all of the administrative gaps for robust deportation, “legislation is critical.”
“We are adding judges,” Sessions added later. “We’ve added 50 already. We’ll have another 40 by January. And the backlog, instead of going up, will be going down, and we’ll continue to work at that.”
The attorney general was responding to questions from Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who said he was being informed by conversations with Customs and Border Protection officers that “catch and release” wasn’t being slowed or shut off, an issue that Trump campaigned on.
A June report by Reuters suggested that there had been no significant change to catch and release despite the change in administration’s policy.
Cruz further noted that illegal border crossings appeared to have dramatically dropped in the early months of the administration, but that a recent surge was beginning to concern residents who live along the border.
Federal immigration officials also deal with other legal and logistical constraints that can significantly slow deportations, like a shortage of beds in detention facilities and a previous court ruling that limited the stay of women and children to only 21 days.
