As the migrant situation continues to erode into unthinkable depths of disorder, states concerned with the ramifications of an unchecked border are finding themselves forced to take matters into their own hands.
The degree of the federal government’s failure to take control of the border crisis is exemplified by the release of new data revealing that nearly 600,000 illegal migrants who crossed the border without authorization since March of 2021 were not even charged or given a date to appear in court prior to being released.
As a result, these migrants have been placed in legal limbo, and thousands of them have been dropped altogether from the program that was supposed to track them, causing them to simply disappear and add to the already-high illegal population in America.
According to the data obtained by NBC News, over half a million of these migrants are now living in the shadows outside the reach of immigration authorities. Moreover, many of these migrants are not aware that they are running out of time as far as their one-year deadlines to apply for asylum.
This comes as immigration authorities have found themselves overwhelmed by the huge influx of people pouring in from the southern border — a consequence of the Biden administration’s lax border security.
As a result, the government has departed from the standard practice of past administrations, which held that migrants must be given a court date and charging documents by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shortly after detainment.
“A lot of the people who are here, they really urgently want to seek asylum. They want their case heard as soon as possible. They don’t want to be in limbo,” Karlyn Kurichety, legal director of the migrant advocacy organization Al Otro Lado, told NBC News.
The problem can be traced back to late March 2021, when due to the large numbers of illegal aliens arriving at the border, CBP began releasing migrants with a “Notice to Report” — which directs them to report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office — rather than the usual “Notice to Appear,” which gives the migrants a court appearance date at which it will be decided whether they will be deported or allowed to legally stay in the United States.
But it soon became apparent that the process wasn’t working, as many migrants were simply not showing up at ICE offices to receive their court dates.
Thus, ICE started a program in July 2021 known as Parole Plus Alternatives to Detention, or Parole Plus ATD. It allowed migrants to roam freely without being given charging documents, their movements tracked by ankle monitors.
Over 800,000 migrants were released on notices to report or Parole Plus ATD from March 2021 to late January 2023.
Of these, only 214,000 were eventually given charging documents with court dates, NBC learned. Thus, approximately 588,000 were left without any idea about where or when to report for their asylum hearings.
The outlet notes:
NBC News first reported that border agents in Rio Grande Valley were instructed to begin releasing migrants without court dates in March 2021, as border processing centers became overcrowded and unable to quickly process children arriving unaccompanied, the first major border challenge of the Biden presidency.
The document instructing border agents to release migrants without charging documents said the move was “intended to mitigate operational challenges, including risks to national security, during significant surges of illegal migration as currently exist in the Rio Grande Valley.”
Since then, the practice has expanded to include the entire border. The Department of Homeland Security had maintained that migrants released without charging documents would soon be given court dates at ICE offices in the interior of the country. It was not previously known that nearly 600,000 newly arrived migrants still remain at large in the U.S. without a clear path toward immigration proceedings.
It doesn’t help that Congress has only funded ICE for about half of the population presently on ATD. Furthermore, two top officials at DHS told NBC they will be making cuts to the program.
Kurichety’s dissatisfaction with the situation highlighted the fact that even those who are pro-migrant are frustrated by the disorder. Speaking of one of her clients, Kurichety said, “She would ask and the [ICE] officer would say, ‘Just wait for your court date, just wait for your court date.’ And because of that she missed her one-year filing deadline [for asylum].”
In Florida, leaders of the Republican-dominated Legislature on Friday called a special session which will, among other items, expand a state program by which Gov. Ron DeSantis transported illegal migrants out of the state to Democratic strongholds.
House Speaker Paul Renner (R-Palm Coast) and Senate President Kathleen Passidomo (R-Naples) sent memos to the members of their respective chambers saying the program must be greenlighted in order to deal with the “influx of migrants landing in the Florida Keys.” In recent days, the DeSantis administration has dealt with hundreds of migrants arriving by boat in the Keys, mostly from Cuba and Haiti.
The new proposed program would allow DeSantis to fund migrant flights anywhere in the U.S. He is asking the Legislature for $12 million to get the initiative running.
Democrats have fiercely opposed the migrant flights. Among the many parties which have sued the DeSantis administration over the plan is the Center for Government Accountability, which claims the administration has withheld public records having to do with the program.
In another lawsuit, the Boston-based Lawyers for Civil Rights accused DeSantis’ flights of migrants to Massachusetts of being a “premeditated, fraudulent, and illegal scheme.”
To learn more about the migration crisis and what can be done to stop it, click here.
