Catch and Release: 200 Caravan Migrants Likely To Be Set Free in U.S.

Hundreds of asylum seekers traveling with a caravan in an effort to gain entry to the United States will likely be set free into the U.S. through the “Catch and Release” program while they await their asylum hearings.

Federal officials told Congress on Tuesday that more than 450 caravan asylum-seekers made it into the U.S., with 122 of them illegally crossing the southern border.

Meanwhile, more than 330 caravan asylum seekers walked through the ports of entry at the border to claim credible fear. Federal officials now say that about 205 of those asylum seekers have cleared the low-standard initial credible fear screening, increasing the likelihood that those individuals will be released into the interior of the U.S. while they await their asylum hearings.

“Nearly everybody” meets the current standards of credible fear, according to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Lee Francis Cissna.

The “Catch and Release” program allows foreign nationals to be released into the U.S. while they await immigration and asylum hearings through a number of legal loopholes and weak asylum laws.

Breitbart News has chronicled a plan that President Trump’s administration could implement which would build tent cities at the border to end Catch and Release. That plan, though, has not been implemented by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Though DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has said the agency will prosecute illegal border crossers, federal officials did not say whether the more than 120 border crossers with the caravan are currently being prosecuted.

Border-crossers and asylum seekers have a nearly 90 percent chance of evading deportation from the U.S. if they claim credible fear at the border, Breitbart News reported. In the last three months of 2017, there were more than 30,000 credible fear claims by foreign nationals at the southern border.