It was a bombshell report that I don’t think received enough attention. ICE has plans ready to do a mass release of thousands of illegal aliens.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) justifies this lunacy by stating it needs to cut detainee holding capacity. Blame it on a budget shortfall. That shortfall would have been funded in the Senate foreign aid package the House refused to bring up for a vote.
Four officials at ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), who spoke to The Washington Post, claimed that this is due to a $700 million budget shortfall, which allegedly would have been funded under the $95 billion foreign aid package scuttled by House Republicans for failing to address the border crisis.
According to The Post, the bill would have provided $6 billion in funding that would allow ICE under President Joe Biden’s policies to continue housing illegal immigrants at detention centers throughout the nation. The outlet reported, “The bill’s demise has led ICE officials to begin circulating an internal proposal to save money by releasing thousands of detainees and cutting detention levels from 38,000 beds to 22,000 — the opposite of the enforcement increases Republicans say they want.”
This is infuriating. The Biden administration is holding a plan to mass release illegal aliens into the country unless the House goes along with the Senate’s loser of a spending bill. That will show those stubborn Republicans.
Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL) posted about this move by DHS.
Biden is now holding our country hostage, threatening to release MS-13 gang members and known rapists & murderers into our communities unless Congress grants “asylum” amnesty to the 10 million illegals he allowed to walk across our border AND gives another $60 billion to 🇺🇦. pic.twitter.com/wwGSgSUy4n
House Homeland Security Committee chairman Mark Green (R-TN) released a statement and a DHS spokesperson reacted to the blowback by Republicans.
“This is absurd, on a number of levels,” House Homeland Security Committee chairman Mark Green (R-TN) said in a statement. “This is just further proof of Secretary Mayorkas’ refusal to comply with the law requiring him to detain illegal aliens—one of the reasons he was just impeached,” he said.
He added that Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has “consistently requested fewer ICE beds year after year” and furthermore “consistently failed to even fill the beds that Congress has given him.”
“Instead of treating enforcement as a hostage negotiation—‘give us more money or else’—Secretary Mayorkas should just do his job and follow the law.”
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Erin Heeter said in a statement, “Most recently, Congress rejected the bipartisan national security bill out of hand, which will put at risk DHS’s current removal operations, put further strain on our already overtaxed workforce, and make it harder to catch fentanyl at ports of entry.”
According to Heeter, about half of ICE’s $8.5B annual budget is set aside for detentions. About 72% of illegal aliens in custody as of last month have been moved into detention facilities by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
This alleged mass release plan has not been made public. Shocker, I know. DHS is one of the most non-transparent departments in the Biden administration. Now it is openly threatening Republicans over funding.
The report probably didn’t get the attention it deserves because of all the other chaos created by the Biden administration in the news over the past couple of weeks. The Hur report was released, the impeachment of DHS Secretary Mayorkas, and the Trump court cases have consumed most of the news cycles each day.
The immigration/border security bill should have been a stand-alone bill, not tossed in with big financial packages for Ukraine and Israel, as well as Taiwan. The Senate bill was always meant to pressure Congress into passing aid to Ukraine at a time when some lawmakers are questioning if the money is being wisely spent.
