Early in January, the Obama administration made a great show out of a series of sweeps that gathered up to 121 illegals for deportation. This month the administration is quietly beginning to release some of those same people from custody.

In January Obama’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency conducted several sweeps in various parts of the country as part of a get-tough policy on illegal migrants. But now, only a month later, over two dozen of the 121 illegals gathered up have already been released under pressure from illegal alien activists.

Thirty-three members of eight families of illegals gathered up in January have been released with no further action, though ICE officials say they are still liable for deportation. The families were released after illegal migrant activists rushed to court complaining the ICE raids were “scaring children” and demanding the raids be halted.

Activists celebrated after the quiet release of eight of families.

According to The Washington Post, Katie Shepherd, a lawyer for the CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project, said, “This fight is not just about these eight families, nor is it just about the victims of last month’s raids who have yet to be released. The administration needs to do the right thing by all of these families, ensure that their due process rights are protected, and end family detention once and for all.”

Despite the January sweep, the numbers of deportations have fallen severely as Obama has entered his final years in office. In fact, last year the administration re-tooled its policies to deport even fewer illegals than the already reduced rate from 2014.

Indeed, as the Washington Times noted, the small number of illegals rounded up in the January sweeps amount to less than one in 1,000 of the total number of parents and children who surged across the border, starting in 2014.

The situation has become so dire the president of the National Border Patrol Council said in testimony before Congress that border patrol officers have been given a stand down order by the Obama administration. Brandon Judd was so frustrated with Obama’s edicts, he said, we might as well have no laws at all.

“Immigration laws today appear to be mere suggestions,” Judd said. “There are little or no consequences for breaking the laws and that fact is well known in other countries. If government agencies like DHS or CBP are allowed to bypass Congress by legislating through policy, we might as well abolish our immigration laws altogether.”

Judd also reported that less than half the southern border is under control.

In other testimony before Congress, an immigration expert said the President’s open-door policy is allowing dangerous members of the MS-13 gang to flood across the border, bringing a higher murder rate with them.

Jessica Vaughan, the policy director for the Center for Immigration Studies, warned that these violent gangs are finding fertile ground for recruitment in the United States, saying, “The tide of new young people, many of whom have already been exposed or involved in street gangs at home, has provided a huge pool of new recruits for the gangs here. Gangs such as MS-13 and 18th Street are enjoying a brutal revival in certain parts of the country and are establishing themselves in new places.”

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com