The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is monitoring more than 600,000 migrants who have entered the U.S. with criminal records, according to the chairman of the House National Security, Border and Foreign Affairs subcommittee.
Chairman Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., who will oversee a Tuesday hearing titled, "How the Border Crisis Impacts Public Safety," says U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) overall is monitoring more than 6 million illegal immigrants amid the crisis at the southern border under President Joe Biden.
Grothman adds that roughly 617,000 of those migrants either have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.
"The fact is that illegal aliens should not be in the country in the first place and able to commit these crimes," Grothman said in prepared remarks, obtained by The Washington Times.
"The solutions aren’t hard. Secure the border, stop releasing illegal aliens into the country in droves, and when an illegal alien commits a crime in the community, turn them over to ICE, enforce the law, and remove them from the United States."
NBC News reported in September that the DHS Office of Inspector General found the agency had a limited ability to track migrants once they are released inside the U.S.
In fact, between March 2021 and August 2022, some 177,000 address records for new migrants were either blank or contained nonexistent or nonresidential locations, NBC News said.
Tuesday's subcommittee hearing comes hours before the House is slated to send to the Senate two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for his failure to control the migrant crisis.
Sheriff Bill Waybourn, Tarrant County, Texas, Sheriff Mike Chapman, Loudoun County, Virginia, and former acting DHS Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli were slated to appear before the subcommittee.
Waybourn was expected to tell the panel that 264 illegal immigrants — who among them face eight counts of murder, 38 counts of assault with a deadly weapon, five counts of sexual assault, two counts of possession of child pornography, one count of intoxicated homicide — sit in his jail.
"These offenders, [many of which] are gang members and outlaws, have left nothing untouched," Waybourn said in his prepared remarks, the Times reported.
"While I do not necessarily think these aliens have a higher crime rate, just the fact these people are illegal in our country and committed crimes is the impact."
Chapman was expected to discuss the migrant crisis and cite the rise in juvenile overdoses, with 11 among students at a single high school during six weeks last year.
"Having served as a DEA agent in Miami during the mid and late '80s, I thought I had seen what the worst of the drug problem. I was wrong," Chapman says, the Times reported.