President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is defending a plan that would have the agency provide government identification cards to border crossers and illegal aliens before their release into the United States.

As Breitbart News reported last month, the Biden administration is considering issuing the IDs to illegal aliens once they arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border. The goal is to make securing public benefits easier once they are released into American communities.

In a statement to the Epoch Times, officials with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) defended the initiative as a cost savings for the agency. Annually, illegal immigration costs American taxpayers more than $143 billion.

An ICE spokesman told the Epoch Times:

The pilot program from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is aimed at modernizing “documentation provided to some noncitizens,” an ICE spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email on July 29. [Emphasis added]

“Currently, noncitizens receive paper documents from the federal government about their immigration status. Paper documents pose a security risk, are easily lost, and degrade rapidly in real-world use, creating inefficiencies for the government and noncitizens. Moving to a secure card will save the agency millions, free up resources, and ensure information is quickly accessible to DHS officials while reducing the agency’s FOIA backlog,” the spokesperson said. [Emphasis added]

“For provisionally released noncitizens, the digital modernization will provide ongoing access to important immigration documents through the secure card and connected portal.” [Emphasis added]

Such a program would be a massive boost to the Biden administration’s plans to transform the southern border into a mere checkpoint for border crossers and illegal aliens, where they can be stopped, briefly detained, and then released into American communities.

Identification cards would ensure that border crossers and illegal aliens can more freely move around the U.S. interior and access public services more easily.

From February 2021 to May 2022, alone, Biden has released over a million border crossers and illegal aliens into the U.S. interior. This is about twice the population of Wyoming and larger than the population of Austin, Texas.

The Biden administration has yet to say how many border crossers and illegal aliens were released into the U.S. interior from June through July.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.