National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd says border crossers and illegal aliens are “being dropped off” in the United States as the federal government has yet to build any new border wall barriers at the U.S.-Mexico border.
In an exclusive interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Tonight, Judd said the program known as “Catch and Release,” where border crossers and illegal aliens are routinely released into the interior of the country, is occurring in full swing despite claims it has ended.
LISTEN:
Judd explained:
Right now when we arrest one person, we let that person go and we’re on pace to deal with 900,000 people this year. That’s a lot more than what we did even in the height of our arrests when we were dealing with around 500,000 to 600,000 people. The increases are astronomical. We just don’t have the space to deal with these people so yeah, they’re being just dropped off on the streets. That’s exactly what’s happening. [Emphasis added]
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The process to deport an individual can take as many as six months to do that. Asylum can take even longer than that. We have about 48,000 beds … well, we’re arresting over 60,000 people a month. So if you have to hold these individuals for six months for deportation proceedings, what do you do with the rest of the people that you arrest? If you don’t have any space to put them, you have to ultimately let them go. [Emphasis added]
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We release them on their own recognizance. We give them a court date … that they’re supposed to show up to. Sometime in the future, the vast majority of them don’t show up. And they do exactly what President Obama said, they disappear into the shadows of society. [Emphasis added]
In the last two months, Breitbart News reported, about 84,500 border crossers and illegal aliens were released into the interior of the U.S. by the Trump administration. Judd told Breitbart News Tonight that these foreign nationals have limited background checks before being released into the U.S.
“On Christmas Eve, I believe it was, we released 154 people at the Greyhound bus station right there in El Paso, Texas. That’s what happens,” Judd said. “If you don’t have any space to hold them, there’s nothing else you can do. And the laws are such that they have the right to go before an immigration judge but you know the backlog in the immigration court system, that’s why it takes up to six months to deport some of these people.”
There’s a limited background check [of border crossers before we let them go] … I’m not going to be able to find out what the criminal record is of that person back in their home country because we don’t have access to other countries’ criminal records … the background check consists of fingerprinting, find out if they have a criminal record here in the United States. [Emphasis added]
“We’re adding a city the size of Tuscon, Arizona every single year of illegal immigrants,” Judd said. “We’re adding a million, if I’m releasing 900,000 people this year, then we’re adding a million people to the population that are frankly illegal here in the United States.”
While the Catch and Release program has been put into “overdrive,” as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have said, no new border walls have been built in new areas that did not previously have barriers at the U.S.-Mexico border, Judd confirmed.
To date, Judd said, the Trump administration has only renovated barriers and built replacement fencing in regions of the border. New barriers on new land that did not previously have a barrier have yet to be built.
Judd said 50 miles of new wall is set to be built in the Rio Grande Valley sector of the southern border, but that construction is likely to be held up in court as the spending bill approving the funds for the wall dictates that the barrier can only be built if local officials support the project.
Current illegal immigration projections predict that aside from the border crossers and illegal aliens who are caught by Border Patrol, then released into the interior of the country, there could be about half a million illegal aliens who successfully cross into the U.S. through the southern border, undetected, this year.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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