New York may be complaining the loudest about the influx of illegal immigrants but new government data shows the migrants from the Biden border surge are reaching every corner of the country, straining communities’ ability to accommodate them all.
The numbers are so overwhelming that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement hasn’t been able to start deportation proceedings in about half of the cases, according to data provided to a federal court tracking roughly 2,500 migrants caught and released over a few days in May.
And 100 of the migrants failed to check in with ICE altogether, the government said. They are now in violation of their parole but Homeland Security did not say what will happen to them.
The new data gives an unprecedented look at a cross-section of the migrants arriving at the border and the government’s struggles to handle them.
Roughly 18% of the new arrivals — about one in six — headed for New York City, Long Island and the Hudson Valley. Another 30% of the migrants went to the Chicago, Boston, Miami and San Francisco regions. Atlanta, Denver, Detroit, New Orleans and Washington also ranked as top destinations.
The migrants were “paroled” into the country by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas 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 the migrants’ whereabouts and their compliance with the terms of their parole.
According to the latest documents filed last month, of the 2,572 illegal immigrants in the population, 2,472 have checked in with ICE but just 1,290 have been served with a charging document, or Notice to Appear. Without an NTA they are not yet in deportation proceedings.
Another 100 have not checked in at all, despite the requirement that they do so within 60 days.
“If you want to know how the Biden administration has broken our immigration system, look no further than how it has responded to these aliens,” said Andrew “Art” Arthur, a former immigration judge and senior staffer on immigration matters on Capitol Hill.
ICE did not respond to an inquiry for this story. In court documents, the government said it was pondering its options and has reported parole violators to ICE’s fugitive teams for “appropriate” action.
“Enforcement actions are determined on a case-by-case basis and may include, but are not limited to arrest, increased monitoring through the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program, and/or confinement in a detention facility,” Daniel A. Bible, ICE’s deputy associate director, told the judge.
Deportation officers, though, told The Washington Times the likelihood of tracking someone down is slim, given how little there is to go on.
The government closed out fiscal year 2023 at the end of September, and when final numbers are reported they will show the worst year on record for illegal immigration nationwide.
Since President Biden took office, roughly 6 million unauthorized migrants have attempted to enter. Some were turned back, but analysts say at least 2 million were caught and released, and nearly 2 million more managed to elude capture.
As they spread throughout the country they have rewritten the terms of the immigration debate, with even die-hard Democrat leaders now complaining about the crushing burdens the newcomers bring.
New York Mayor Eric Adams has said the cost of accommodating the migrants will “destroy” his city.
Homeland Security has also struggled to even charge the newcomers with immigration violations.
Of the migrants that reached the New York region from the Title 42 parole test population, less than 50% have been served a Notice to Appear.
ICE’s Chicago region, which covers Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Kentucky and Kansas, received 242 of the migrants and issued an NTA to less than a third of them.
The Boston region, which covers New England, got 199 of the migrants. It has done a little better on issuing NTAs, at better than 70%.
The Washington region, which is run out of Chantilly, Virginia, includes the District of Columbia and Virginia. It got 96 of the new arrivals, 60% of whom have been issued NTAs.
Without an NTA, those migrants are not actually in deportation proceedings, meaning the government has not delivered on Mr. Mayorkas’s promise to impose consequences on those who enter illegally.
Mr. Arthur, now a resident fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said that’s an embarrassment to the department.
“This gives a lie to everything the White House and Secretary Mayorkas have said about the consequences that will be imposed on individuals who enter the United States illegally,” he said. “This undermines the administration’s contentions that the border is not open. It plainly is.”
He said ICE’s failure in these cases is particularly striking because the case is under direct judicial scrutiny, and these migrants should be getting the closest attention of any of the 3 million illegal immigrants encountered during the Biden administration.
The migrants were caught in the run-up to the end of the coronavirus public health emergency and the lifting of the Title 42 border restrictions on May 11.
Homeland Security had prepared a plan to “parole” the migrants into the U.S. That’s a quick release that takes less time and resources than quickly ousting them or fully processing them and issuing them an NTA. The hope was that they would return to ICE and collect an NTA later.
A federal judge in Florida ruled that the use of parole was likely illegal and issued an injunction against the practice.
Homeland Security released the 2,572 migrants after the injunction took effect, and the judge, while not holding the department in contempt of court, ordered monthly reporting on the population. The resulting data has given an extraordinary look at how the illegal immigrants have dispersed throughout the country, and at ICE’s struggles to track them down and issue them NTAs.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, based at Syracuse University, shows a slightly different geographic spread, with New York City accounting for about 9% of immigration summonses issued between June and August.
Houston and Harris County in Texas and Chicago and Cook County in Illinois are next.
TRAC said it counted 37 counties that each received at least 1,000 immigrants over those three months.
The arrivals are coming far faster than the immigration courts can handle them.
TRAC said 180,000 new cases were added in August alone, while judges closed about 60,000 cases or only a third of the incoming rate.
The total backlog of cases reached 2.6 million as of the end of August. That is roughly twice the pace in September 2020, near the end of the Trump administration.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.