President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is failing to disclose crimes, if any, committed by migrants that the administration has released into the United States interior, a newly filed lawsuit alleges.
After taking office in January, Biden ended the Remain in Mexico program, which had proven remarkably effective in eliminating the Catch and Release policy whereby border crossers are apprehended and subsequently released into the U.S. interior while awaiting their asylum hearings.
Biden announced in February that his DHS, with the help of the United Nations, would start releasing about 25,600 migrants enrolled in the program into the U.S. interior. Breitbart News exclusively reported that the migrants are being released in Brownsville and El Paso, Texas, as well as San Diego, California.
On Wednesday, the government watchdog group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against DHS for allegedly failing to disclose the number of Remain in Mexico migrants who went on to commit crimes after the agency released them into the U.S. interior.
According to the lawsuit, Judicial Watch had first requested the information on March 18. DHS officials responded to the request on April 5 confirming that they had received it.
While the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency responded to the FOIA request, stating that they had found no criminal records on Remain in Mexico migrants, other sub-agencies at DHS like the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have yet to respond to the request, the lawsuit claims.
“The Biden administration should come clean about crimes committed by aliens as a result of its reckless decision to end [Remain in Mexico], a commonsense measure put in place by the Trump administration to try to control the border,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement.
The lawsuit asks a federal judge to order DHS to make available all criminal records, if any, on Remain in Mexico migrants.
As of early May, more than 8,300 Remain in Mexico migrants had been released into the U.S. interior — many headed to Florida, Texas, and California.
The lawsuit is Judicial Watch v. DHS, No. 1:21-cv-01927 and was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.