OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was clearly not prepared on Tuesday when Fox News reporter Peter Doocy grilled her about the immigration crisis at the US-Mexico border.
“Why is it that large numbers of single adult men are being released to the United States just hours after being apprehended at the southern border?” Doocy asked.
“Well I’m not sure the specifics of what you’re referring to, Peter,” Psaki began.
“What I can tell you in terms of what our policy is and how we’re approaching the border is that we continue to be under Title 42, migrants who cannot be expelled under Title 42 are placed into immigration proceedings, and one of those avenues could be placed in an alternative to detention program in the interior of the United States,” she continued.
“Sometimes that means moving migrants to other parts of the United States to move to different detention facilities where they wait for next steps in the immigration process, such as a court hearing and are required to check-in with the local ICE office. So that is something — certainly something that is happening out there in the country, and it’s consistent with our policy,” she added.
WATCH:
The Department of Homeland Security announced Monday that it will begin tracking illegal migrants released into the United States after nearly 50,000 have gone missing, even as record numbers continue pouring across the southwest border from Mexico.
Last fall, DHS began to permit noncitizens to leave through a process called parole under certain conditions.
Under the program, migrants are still let out of Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection detention facilities, but their records are then digitally transferred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the DHS agency that is responsible for keeping track of illegal aliens still within U.S. borders.
Those who have been released were outfitted with ankle monitors or have had an app installed on their phone that allegedly helps ICE keep track of them.
“Until early fall, the Biden administration released many from custody with documents known as notices to report — a document telling them to check in with ICE once they reach their destination in the interior of the country. Of 100,000 released and told to report to ICE between mid-March and August, 47,000 failed to check-in,” the report stated.
“The notices to report created a headache for the DHS because it was unable to track the 47,000 who did not follow up with ICE, and it had no idea where they had gone,” the report continued.
“The DHS stopped issuing notices to report in November, the spokesman said, but data released by CBP indicate this practice stopped in late September after so many people failed to check-in,” the outlet continued. “What’s worse, under the notices to report effort, no one was traceable because ICE had no information about each person. Even though Mayorkas told senators in September that those who fail to self-report to ICE ‘would qualify as an enforcement priority of ours,’ the government now has no way to know where they are living.”
Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin reported this week that DHS encountered nearly 179,000 migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border in December alone, indicating anew that President Biden’s immigration and border security policies are doing next to nothing to stem the tide of illegal immigration.
