The Department of Homeland Security is far short on detention space and will have to release illegal immigrants to prepare for a surge of newcomers at the border next month, the country’s deportation chief told Congress on Tuesday.
Tae Johnson, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said he had sought thousands more detention beds in the agency’s new budget, but higher-ups in the Biden administration rejected that idea.
Now, he’ll face the looming border surge with a maximum of 34,000 detention beds. And in reality, he can’t even fill all of those because of coronavirus restrictions.
The result is that he’ll have to release people, Mr. Johnson told the House Appropriations Committee. He said he hopes to speed up deportations to cut into the number of detainees, and will try to limit releases to people with lower-level criminal records.
“Most of the folks we are releasing from custody will not have a criminal history,” Mr. Johnson assured lawmakers.
That was cold comfort to Rep. Dave Joyce, Ohio Republican and chairman of the subcommittee that oversees ICE’s funding. He pointed out that the U.S. doesn’t have access to criminal histories from many other countries.
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“We don’t have access to many of those countries’ records,” Mr. Johnson said.
The cuts have already started. As of last month, ICE was holding more than 28,000 migrants on any given day, but that dropped to 25,542 as of this week.
Mr. Johnson told the House Appropriations Committee in testimony Tuesday that he wants to get that figure down to about 21,000 so they have space for the worst cases among the expected new arrivals.
His testimony came as Congress is scrutinizing the president’s budget, with officials fanning out across Capitol Hill.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testified Tuesday before the Senate and has a hearing slated before the House on Wednesday. Customs and Border Protection, ICE’s sister agency in immigration enforcement, also is slated to appear before the House on Wednesday.
Mr. Mayorkas acknowledged Tuesday that the border situation will get worse next month with the end of the Title 42 expulsion power, which allowed some migrants to be turned back.
That rule limited their ability to gain a foothold in the country. Once that power expires, the government will have to allow more migrants that foothold. That is expected to draw more migrants.
“We do anticipate a surge in the number of encounters,” Mr. Mayorkas told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
The secretary didn’t give estimates for the numbers, but he also didn’t counter the suggestion by one senator that as many as 11,000 migrants could enter illegally every day. That would be nearly double the rate right now.
Mr. Mayorkas insisted he’s trying to find solutions, calling border security a top priority.
That didn’t sit well with senators who have heard similar assurances over the last two years, while watching record levels of chaos.
“You just sit there looking with a blank look on your face,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican.
Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, recounted reporting by The New York Times on the record numbers of migrant children who have been abused and forced into labor by the people they were released to.
“Are you proud of this record?” Mr. Hawley demanded.
Mr. Mayorkas said he disagreed with the accusation that Biden policies were responsible for the surge of kids, but said the abuse was “something we do not condone.”
Mr. Biden has repeatedly pushed for fewer detention beds, bowing to demands from immigration activists who argue the immigrants shouldn’t be held at all.
In his fiscal year 2024 budget, Mr. Biden proposed cutting the 34,000 beds down to 25,000, though he also asked for a “contingency” fund that could be used for beds if the administration wanted.
ICE’s Mr. Johnson told the House Appropriations Committee that those beds are absolutely essential, and he said he’s been assured the administration will spend the money on the 9,000 extra beds.
But he was still miffed by the president’s decisions.
“I cannot explain exactly why it was structured that way,” he said.
Mr. Johnson said having a contingency fund does make sense given the chaos of the border, but he wanted the full supply of current beds, with the contingency part being able to add beyond that.
“In my personal view I wish the 34,000 beds would have been in my base [budget] and then I would have been able to gain access to, you know, 5,000 or 10,000 beds as part of the contingency fund, but it didn’t shake out that way,” he said.
Still, Mr. Johnson said the situation is bad enough that the country can’t detain its way out. It would take more beds than exists in the entire public sector, he said.
“You do have to make tough choices on how to use your resources,” he said.
Mr. Johnson also told lawmakers Tuesday that he’s asked for authority to start making “virtual” arrests of illegal immigrants.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants have been caught and released at the border without being served a Notice to Appear, or NTA, which is the official charging document in the civil immigration system. ICE has had a hard time getting folks to come in to collect NTAs, so the agency is looking at new tools.
“There is a request to the Hill to give us the authority that we can actually serve it virtually and agree to have people accept their documents electronically,” Mr. Johnson said.
He didn’t say what, exactly, the process would look like, though he did mention at one point the possibility of virtual interviews.
He acknowledged that some parts of the immigration enforcement process, such as collecting fingerprints, will still need to be done in person, so if that wasn’t done at the border it would still need to happen in the country’s interior.
The latest numbers show more than 800,000 people were caught and released without NTAs since March 2021.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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