The Border Patrol, using "parole" powers, caught and released 2,572 illegal immigrants last year, but less than 1% of the migrants have been deported or otherwise confirmed to have left the United States, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has not been able to summon more than 350 of the migrants who came in during the surge after the Title 42 expulsion program ended, and said in court documents this year that it has not been able to track more than 30 of them, reports The Washington Times.
Former immigration judge Andrew "Art" Arthur, a former immigration judge and ICE lawyer commented that the missing immigrants undermine Homeland Security 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."
"What this control group proves is that DHS isn't delivering any consequences," he added.
The Border Patrol created its short-lived parole program last year to speed up the catch-and-release process when the Trump-era Title 42 policy ended. Because of the expected surge, officials opted to release migrants, while ordering them to report to ICE and collect court summonses within 90 days.
U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II in Florida had issued an injunction against the program, but 2,572 migrants were paroled.
The judge had considered contempt charges against the government but instead ordered extensive reporting on the immigrants.
Now, ICE says that 32 immigrants have not yet checked in, and as ICE still has not issued summonses to 351 people, they are not facing official deportation proceedings yet.
Further, ICE can confirm that only 11 of 2,572 migrants have left on their own or have been deported, and just one is being detained by ICE.
"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 Arthur, 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."
The released data also shows:
- Migrants from 45 countries were released, with Venezuelans leading the group, at nearly 560, followed by Colombians and Peruvians.
- Three migrants were from Pakistan, six from Afghanistan, nine from Bangladesh, and one from Somalia, countries that have been labeled as "special interest" because of their terrorism connections.
- 43 of the migrants were Chinese.
- Slightly more than half of the migrants were single adults.