A 61-page report from the House Judiciary Committee refutes claims from the Department of Homeland Security that migrants are being “quickly” removed.
QUICK FACTS:
- According to a report from the House Judiciary Committee, less than 1% of the more than 2.1 million illegal immigrants at the Southern Border have gone through an immigration court.
- The findings challenge the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) assertions that the “southwest border is closed and illegal aliens are removed from the country quickly.”
- Few of the migrants are asylum-seekers, contrary to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ claims.
- “Despite Secretary Mayorkas’s claims that aliens encountered at the border are, in fact, asylum seekers, the Biden Administration has placed only a fraction of illegal aliens into expedited removal to be screened for asylum eligibility,” the document says.
- Less than 200,000 of the 2 million illegal immigrants claimed to have a fear of persecution in their home country.
- Of those who sought asylum, only 6% were screened for persecution.
- While 72% of the illegal immigrants screened for persecution cleared the process, almost half of those who did not have a credible fear of persecution were not removed from the United States.
- “Finally, 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,” the committee’s report states. “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.”
FROM THE REPORT:
- “These data contradict Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas’s statements that the southwest border is closed and that illegal aliens are ‘quickly’ removed,” the report reads. “Instead, with more than 99 percent of illegal aliens staying inside the United States after being released by the Biden administration, there is virtually no enforcement of our immigration laws.”
- “Between January 20, 2021, and March 31, 2023, the Biden Administration has removed from the United States only 5,993 illegal aliens who were encountered at the southwest border and who were placed in removal proceedings before an immigration judge during that time,” it adds. “In other words, of the at least 2.1 million aliens released into the United States since January 20, 2021, the Biden Administration has failed to remove, through immigration court removal proceedings, roughly 99.7 percent of those illegal aliens.”
- The report quoted Mayorkas as explaining that DHS increased the number of asylum officers “to ensure that [the] screening process, that credible fear screening process, is done fairly, with access to counsel, but expeditiously.”
- The House Judiciary Committee argued that Secretary Mayorkas’s comments “are divorced from the border reality.”
BACKGROUND:
- More than 24,000 Chinese illegal immigrants were apprehended along the Southwest U.S. border in fiscal year 2023.
- The number is a 1,115% increase from the less than 2,000 Chinese immigrants apprehended last year.
- Dr. Kenneth Allard, a retired Army Colonel and former Dean of Students at the National War College, expressed concerns that China may be exploiting vulnerable border policies.
- “It’s obvious [Biden] is not entirely in control at present, China realizes that as well,” he said.
