Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Patrick Lechleitner has revealed that it’s common for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to have no information on migrants released into the United States from the southern border. During a NewsNation interview, Lechleitner was asked about ISIS-linked migrants and how they were allowed to enter the country after crossing the border.
Lechleitner’s comments come as President Joe Biden’s DHS has transformed the border into a European-style checkpoint, where the majority of migrants are apprehended, briefly detained, and then released into American communities with court dates set years in the future. According to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report published in January, DHS has welcomed more than 6.2 million migrants to the U.S. interior since Biden took office.
In another part of the interview, Lechleitner expressed concerns about the record inflow of illegal immigration over the last few years, which has led to one ICE agent being responsible for thousands of immigration cases. Lechleitner called on Congress to fund at least 50,000 detention beds, far exceeding the 25,000 detention beds requested by DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Even if Congress funded Lechleitner’s request, it would still be insufficient to address the scale of the problem. As of the end of Fiscal Year 2023, there were 6.2 million migrants in deportation proceedings who were not detained and were living freely throughout the U.S. This suggests that many more detention beds would be needed, as well as a huge expansion of monitoring programs, to ensure migrants are properly tracked by the agency.
