The House Committee on the Judiciary released a staff report on Monday that not only contradicts claims by the Biden administration on the border crisis, but it also reveals with newly obtained data that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has failed to remove more than 99 percent of illegal aliens that were encountered along the border with Mexico.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Immigration Subcommittee Chairman Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) released the 61-page interim staff report titled The Biden Border Crisis: New Data and Testimony Show How the Biden Administration Opened the Southwest Border and Abandoned Interior Immigration Enforcement after persistent demands by the committee that the DHS provide basic information about the state of the border crisis.
The newly obtained non-public data exposed the truth of the border crisis, painting a “bleak picture of the state of our border security under President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas.”
A Judiciary Committee press release highlighted the report’s key findings:
- Between January 20, 2021, and March 31, 2023, there were over 5 million illegal alien encounters. Of these encounters, at least 2,464,424 had no confirmed departure from the United States.
- During the same period, DHS released at least 2,148,738 illegal aliens into the United States.
- Only 5,993 illegal aliens encountered at the southwest border and placed in removal proceedings before an immigration judge were actually removed from the United States during this time.
- A mere six percent of illegal aliens released into the United States were even screened for fear of persecution for purposes of asylum.
- An additional 205,473 aliens were released into the country through illegal categorical parole programs.
The report revealed that due to the “unprecedented border crisis,” fueled by the Biden administration’s open-border policies, some Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers “have been forced to abandon arrests and removals of aliens, including criminal aliens, to process the illegal aliens who have arrived at the southwest border.”
Transcribed testimony before the Committee from a wide range of ICE officials, according to the report, revealed that under the Biden administration, “releases have increased, removals have decreased, American communities have become less safe,” and the administration “has all but abandoned immigration enforcement.”
Stating that DHS Secretary Mayorkas and congressional Democrats have downplayed the seriousness of the immigration crisis by labeling illegal aliens seeking to cross the border as mostly asylum seekers, the report’s findings found the opposite to be true, with the Biden administration placing only a “fraction of illegal aliens into expedited removal to be screened for asylum eligibility.”
“Of the more than 2.1 million illegal aliens released by DHS from January 20, 2021, through March 31, 2023, only 197,531 illegal aliens were placed in expedited removal” as asylum seekers “with upward of 2 million aliens being released or placed directly in removal proceedings without first having established that they even feared persecution,” the report stated, adding that “of the illegal aliens who were found to have a credible fear of persecution and whose asylum claims were adjudicated on the merits, more than two-thirds failed to establish asylum or another form of relief, resulting in final orders of removal. As of March 2023, DHS had removed only 874 of those aliens, which is less than half the number who received final orders of removal.”
The comprehensive report not only focused on actual numbers of illegal alien encounters but on the dangerous consequences of the Biden administration’s open-borders policies, such as releasing illegals with a simple “notice to appear.” All of the data shared in the report clearly shows that President Biden has no interest in controlling the southwest border and is ignoring his sworn Constitutional duty to protect our borders from invasion.
In the report’s conclusion, the Judiciary Committee stated, “In passing H.R. 2 on May 11, 2023, the House of Representatives proposed a solution to end the chaos. Congress must secure the southwest border and eliminate the incentives for illegal immigration, or this crisis will continue to intensify. This interim staff report helps to inform these legislative proposals. It is now up to the Senate and President Biden to act on H.R. 2 and other measures to ensure the safety and security of all Americans through a secure southwest border and robust immigration enforcement.”
