Immigration and Customs Enforcement, prodded by a federal judge, has now issued hundreds of deportation charging documents to illegal immigrants caught and released around the end of the Title 42 pandemic border expulsion policy in May.
Six months after they were caught and released on “parole” by the Border Patrol in the hours after the end of Title 42, nearly all of the 2,572 migrants have now checked in with ICE.
In the last month, ICE made a major effort to serve them a Notice to Appear, the official charging document for immigration court, with 645 NTAs issued from mid-October to mid-November.
But that leaves 413 migrants — or 16% of the population — who haven’t been served an NTA, despite having been in the country for six months.
Without an NTA, those migrants aren’t officially in deportation proceedings, undercutting Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s claim that those who are caught and released are being monitored, sent through courts and “promptly” deported if they fail to win their cases.
The migrants were “paroled” into the country in anticipation of the expiration of the coronavirus pandemic emergency and the end of the Title 42 border policy. They were released despite a court order blocking parole, and a federal judge has demanded the government report on their whereabouts and their compliance with the terms of their parole.
Daniel Bible, ICE’s deputy assistant associate director for detention and deportation, said his officers are too overwhelmed with work to get it all done.
“This process has taken longer than anticipated due to the overall large number of encounters and [Enforcement and Removal Operations] having only approximately 6,000 officers nationwide who are responsible for various aspects of interior enforcement,” he told U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell.
“Local offices continue to closely track these cases, and are reviewing them on an individualized basis, and
prioritizing these cases where operationally feasible,” Mr. Bible added.
He said it’s taken an average of 45 days to issue an NTA to the migrants.
Perhaps most intriguingly, in an October filing with the court, Mr. Bible said they had determined that eight of the migrants they checked up on that month had voluntarily gone home.
The migrants were part of a surge just ahead of the end of Title 42 that so overwhelmed the Border Patrol that agents were ordered to parole them for 60 days.
They were supposed to check in with ICE during that time, and officers were supposed to issue NTAs.
But as of the first 60 days, just 1,507 had checked in, and only 464 — less than 20% — had been issued NTAs. Those numbers have ticked up as ICE, under prodding from Judge Wetherell, made the cases a priority.
Mr. Bible has repeatedly blamed a lack of resources for being able to handle the migrants.
That’s particularly curious given the Biden administration’s longstanding aversion to giving ICE more deportation officers.
For most of his tenure, President Biden has sought cuts to ICE’s overall budget and to slash its ability to detain illegal immigrants, though Congress has rejected those each time.
In the last month, Mr. Biden has reversed course and asked Congress for an infusion of cash — about $2.5 billion for ICE — to expand deportation flights and add new detention beds.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.