President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has freed about 173,000 border crossers into the United States, many without a Notice to Appear in immigration court, in the first half of the year, according to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI).
In testimony at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on Tuesday, Johnson revealed that DHS has released nearly 140,000 border crossers with a Notice to Appear in immigration court and another nearly 40,000 border crossers with only a Notice to Report to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
Data from 2019 found that 9-in-10 border crossers given a Notice to Appear in immigration court never show up to their court hearings.
“We’re back to the height of the 2019 illegal immigration crisis,” former Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan told Breitbart News. “The difference is that Biden is not doing anything to stop it.”
Compare those 173,000 releases to 2020 when just 5,000 border crossers were released by former President Donald Trump’s administration during the same time period.
Of those tens of thousands of border crossers released with only a Notice to Report, just 16 percent have checked in with ICE agents as they were instructed to do, according to Johnson — indicating that 84 percent of these border crossers are flouting DHS rules after their release.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas confirmed that states and local communities are not being notified when the agency releases border crossers.
“We do not,” Mayorkas said when asked by Johnson if DHS informs states and local communities about their releasing border crossers into their areas.
In addition to those border crossers being released into the U.S. interior by DHS, Johnson said U.S. Border Patrol officials now estimate that about 750 to 1,000 illegal aliens successfully cross the southern border every day.
Johnson estimates that at current illegal immigration levels, more than 600,000 border crossers will be released into the U.S. interior or have successfully crossed the U.S.-Mexico border by the end of the year.
“That’s larger than the population of Wyoming,” Johnson said. “It’s approaching the population of Vermont. That’s the extent of the problem that … [Mayorkas] and this administration are denying.”
An Axios report on Tuesday stated that the number of border crossers released into the U.S. interior and given only a Notice to Report is around 50,000 since Biden took office. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) estimates the figure to be at about 55,000 border crossers.
Recent analysis by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) projected that Biden’s massive Catch and Release operation — where border crossers are often bussed or flown into U.S. cities — will “surge” the nation’s illegal alien population.
Currently, FAIR estimates that 14.5 million illegal aliens live in the U.S. By the end of Biden’s fourth year in office, the analysis projects that number to grow to potentially more than 20 million at current illegal immigration levels.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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