Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, is calling on Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to explain how Immigration and Customs Enforcement miscalculated the number of migrants released into the United States.
"ICE's mission statement reads as follows: 'Protect America through criminal investigations and enforcing immigration laws to preserve national security and public safety,'" Fallon told the Daily Caller. "Instead of living up to this, ICE appears more interested in squashing transparency and empowering radical anti-ICE activists.
"Sadly, this is yet another chapter in the story of Secretary Mayorkas' incompetent, negligent, and reckless leadership of DHS. The American people deserve answers. We will find them come hell or high water."
According to the Caller, ICE was underreporting the number of migrants released into the country with no way of tracking them by more than 18,000% and was also underreporting the number of migrants with electronic ankle monitors by almost 600%.
The discrepancy was discovered when ICE hosted a closed-door event Dec. 1 to discuss the "Alternatives to Detention" (ATD) program and provided attendees with different figures than those publicly disclosed on its website.
"As a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, I demand a full review of your ATD program and what led to the posting of erroneous data, as well as your association with radical anti-ICE activists," Fallon wrote in a Monday letter to Mayorkas. "I will be watching closely and will continue to hold you accountable for these missteps in the 118th Congress."
Though the immigration agency later apologized and corrected the problem when "it became clear there was a data miscalculation," Fallon said he is skeptical of the explanation.
"How could this be a 'miscalculation of data' when ICE was announcing the correct figures at a private symposium?" Fallon wrote in his letter. "What was explained away as a 'miscalculation of data' appears more like suppression of data. This comes at a time when our southern border is in a state of emergency."
Fallon also criticized the participation of Yeshiva University law professor Peter Markowitz at the Dec. 1 event. The director of the school's Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic, Markowitz wrote a "blueprint" for dismantling ICE in 2019.
"Your reckless policies have not only facilitated the border crisis but have outright encouraged it," Fallon wrote. "Equally troubling is that the symposium where the correct numbers were distributed featured Peter Markowitz, who in 2019 wrote a blueprint for scrapping ICE. This data suppression and courting of radical 'abolish ICE' activists is sadly characteristic of your dismal leadership as DHS Secretary. When questioned about this, journalists are met with hostility or obfuscation.
"This is unacceptable. The American people deserve transparency."