Report: 7.4M Known Migrants Are Living Across U.S. While Awaiting Deportation, Outpacing Two Years of U.S. Births

SAN DIEGO, CA - JUNE 13: Migrants walk on a road waiting to be processed by the U.S. Borde
Mandel NGAN/AFP/Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images
John Binder

Roughly 7.4 million known migrants — whom the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has not detained — are living across the United States while awaiting deportation hearings, Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin reports.

According to the report, President Joe Biden has more than doubled ICE’s non-detained docket compared to when former President Donald Trump was in office. The docket includes migrants living in American towns and cities whom ICE has not detained but who are awaiting deportation from the U.S.

“Per multiple federal sources, ICE’s non-detained docket has exploded to 7.4 million cases, more than doubling the Trump years, and it’s on pace to hit 8 million by [the] end of year,” Melugin reports.

The number of migrants living throughout the U.S. while awaiting deportation hearings is larger than two years of American births.

“Since day one, President Biden has failed to detain illegal aliens in accordance with the law, instead acting upon the wishes of ‘Abolish ICE’ groups who not only oppose custodial detention but call any tracking of their whereabouts a ‘digital prison,'” National Immigration Center for Enforcement (NICE) President RJ Hauman told Breitbart News.

In Trump’s first full fiscal year as president, there were 2.6 million migrants on ICE’s non-detained docket. By the time Trump left office, the docket had only increased by about 600,000 cases.

Compare that to Biden’s tenure — his administration, through its expansive Catch and Release network at the U.S.-Mexico border, has boosted ICE’s non-detained docket by 4.2 million cases thus far. By the end of 2024, ICE agents expect there to be more than eight million migrants on the docket.

“Thousands of ICE detention beds remain unfilled, and the use of GPS monitoring has decreased significantly while the non-detained docket approaches eight million,” Hauman said. “Biden’s goal is to dismantle detention entirely and instead turn it into social services paid by the American taxpayer while allowing illegal aliens to roam free and await an amnesty.”

The report also indicates that Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is adding about 172,000 migrants to ICE’s non-detained docket every month. At this rate, there could be about 8.6 million migrants on the docket by the end of December.

RELATED EXCLUSIVE: Large Group of Migrants from Many Nations Crosses Border into Arizona

Randy Clark / Breitbart

In May, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) and Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) introduced the “Reshape Alternatives to Detention Act,” which would, among other things, require the DHS to use all available detention space for migrants arriving at the southern border.

Once all detention space is utilized, the legislation would require the DHS to place migrants into the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program with GPS monitoring rather than the current policy where most migrants are allowed to live within the U.S. without any monitoring.

The DHS would GPS-monitor those migrants for the entirety of their immigration court proceedings until they are deported from the U.S. interior.

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

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