Less than 1% of illegal immigrants who were caught and released by the Border Patrol using “parole” powers last year have been deported or confirmed to have left the country on their own, the Department of Homeland Security says.
The 2,572 migrants were part of the surge surrounding the end of the pandemic emergency policy known as Title 42. In the nine months since, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has struggled with them.
Even with a judge breathing down ICE’s neck, the agency has not been able to issue court summonses to more than 350 of the migrants, and it acknowledged in court documents this year that it has lost track of more than 30 of them.
Andrew “Art” Arthur, a former immigration judge and ICE lawyer, said the migrants offer a critical case study for the broader 3 million illegal immigrants who have been caught and released by the Biden administration over the past three years.
“This completely undermines Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas’ contention that there are any actual consequences for illegally entering the United States or that those consequences will be delivered in weeks, not years,” he said. “What this control group proves is that DHS isn’t delivering any consequences.”
The migrants were part of a short-lived program created by the Border Patrol last spring to try to speed up catch-and-release during an expected surge of illegal immigrants near the end of the Title 42 border expulsion policy.
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Officials figured they would be too overwhelmed to be able to process and issue immigration court summonses to all the migrants, so they decided to “parole” them, with orders to report to ICE and collect their court summonses within 90 days.
It was known as Parole+ATD because the migrants were supposed to be on what is known as alternatives to detention, a means of tracking them to ensure they complied with the terms of their release.
U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II in Florida issued an injunction on the program, but the government paroled 2,572 migrants after the injunction. Judge Wetherell considered holding the government in contempt but instead ordered extensive reporting on the migrants, giving the country an unprecedented look at the Biden administration’s struggles.
Although all the migrants were required to check in within 90 days, 360 failed to do so. Of those who did, ICE failed to issue a summons in most cases.
Six months later, ICE says 32 migrants have yet to do even the initial check-in. Of those who have checked in, ICE still hasn’t issued immigration court summonses to 351. That means they are not officially facing deportation proceedings yet.
Of the 2,572 total migrants, ICE said it can confirm only 11 who have been deported or left on their own, which ICE labels “self-removal.”
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One migrant is being held in ICE detention.
ICE declined to provide more details or answer questions about its performance, citing a policy against commenting on matters under litigation.
The 2,572 migrants are a tiny sample of the roughly 3 million illegal immigrants who have been caught and released under President Biden.
“In scientific terms, we would call this the control group. It is much smaller, it is highly selected and it is the group we know the most about and on which the most attention is focused,” said Mr. Arthur, who is now with the Center for Immigration Studies. “If they can’t get this one right, if they can’t do any better than this, there is no hope for this ‘policy’ to the degree that it has any hope of actually controlling illegal immigration.”
He said the difficulty in dealing with the migrants also suggests the bipartisan Senate border security deal, which collapsed this month, wouldn’t have worked the way it was billed.
That bill attempted to rein in illegal crossings by giving the president new expulsion powers but also enshrining catch-and-release for families, who were to be released on alternatives to detention with the understanding they would report back within 90 days for an initial asylum check.
That system is similar to the Parole+ATD program.
Parole is supposed to be used in limited cases when the release of a migrant who lacks permission to enter is deemed an urgent humanitarian need or a significant public benefit. Judge Wetherell has ruled that the Biden administration went too far in creating a categorical parole program to reduce the burden on Homeland Security.
In theory, those migrants are supposed to be using their presence to apply for asylum.
ICE’s court filing shows at least 16 of the 2,572 have done so.
Those numbers are current as of January. ICE’s February filing with the court was bungled and each of the 2,572 entries was cut in half, so the data is illegible.
Among other revelations in the data:
• Migrants from 45 countries were released under the program. Venezuelans were the most populous of the group, with nearly 560. Colombians and Peruvians ranked second and third.
• Three of the migrants were from Pakistan, six from Afghanistan, nine from Bangladesh and one from Somalia, which at some points have been labeled “special interest” countries because of their connections to terrorism.
• Some 43 of the migrants were Chinese, which has become another flashpoint in the border debate.
• Slightly more than half of the migrants came as single adults. They are supposed to be easier to detain and deport than families.
• ICE served immigration court summonses on most of the migrants by mail, indicating it has not yet had an in-person encounter. Mr. Arthur said that is a flaw in the system because it means ICE doesn’t know much about those people or their whereabouts.