Texas border officials are warning President Joe Biden's border policy is filling up jails and will ultimately lead to more danger out on the streets.
"The more we prosecute, the more that they're going to go to jail, and we'll get to a point where there is no more jail space," Sanderson, Texas, Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland, a former Border Patrol agent, told the New York Post.
The ending of the Trump-era Title 42 border expulsions is going to force more arrests for a Texas jail system already maxed out, Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, told the Post.
"Bottom line is these jails are already over capacity," he said.
"You go to Hudspeth [County] Jail — it's over capacity. You go to Val Verde County Jail, it's over capacity. You go to Medina County — these are not even counties that are on the border," he added.
"They're 100-plus miles north."
With Title 42 no longer in place, border enforcement will rely on Title 8, which deports an illegal border crosser once and subjects them to criminal prosecution if they are stopped again, according to the Post.
And, with tens of thousands waiting to enter the U.S. south of the border, federal jail cells likely await them when they enter the U.S., overwhelming Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Cleveland told the Post.
"That's when [ICE] starts running out of bed space," Cleveland continued. "Let's say I [apprehend] six Honduran migrants, and I call over to [Border Patrol] to see if they have any space, and they say, 'No, I have no jail space,' at that point they would be given a NTA — notice to appear in court and let out.
"That's when you start hearing the words 'catch and release.'"
And the release is a direct danger to our communities, the officials warn.
"There is no space," Gonzales said. "That was part of the issue with the governor issuing trespassing charges — all sounds great, but when you apprehend somebody, where do they go? How do they get magistrated? These are all things that are backlogged."
Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott's "catch and jail" policy has netted more than 25,000 migrants with border-related charges, according to the report.
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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