Illegals presently in custody with criminal convictions and/or pending charges will be released purportedly for a lack of funding for the ‘security’ agency to keep them in detention

By John Binder | Breitbart News

SERGIO FLORES/AFP/Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is drafting plans that would include a “mass release” of illegal aliens currently in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody into the United States, a new report reveals.

According to the Washington Post, DHS is considering having ICE release thousands of illegal aliens in the agency’s custody into American cities and towns as the Biden administration claims they need billions from Congress to avoid carrying out the plan in a seemingly quasi-extortion scheme.

The Post reports:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has drafted plans to release thousands of immigrants and slash its capacity to hold detainees after the failure of a Senate border bill that would have erased a $700 million budget shortfall, according to four officials at ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. [Emphasis added]

Some of the proposed cost savings in ICE detention would occur through attrition — deportations — but much of it would have to happen through the mass release of detainees, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations. [Emphasis added]

RJ Hauman of the National Immigration Center for Enforcement (NICE) suggested that Biden’s DHS is not spending funds as they were allocated by Congress, noting that the agency was given more funding for detention space than they had even requested.

“Congress gave the Biden administration more money than they requested for the detention of illegal aliens. So what is ICE spending money on that created this volitional budget gap?” Hauman told Breitbart News.

“First look should be at pilot programs that provide social services to illegal aliens and improper management of detention,” Hauman continued.

“Also, keep in mind that the Trump administration was able to significantly exceed the appropriated amount of detention beds. The Biden administration is only a tad over, after refusing to fill the appropriated bed amount month after month.”

Already, Biden’s DHS has drastically cut the number of illegal aliens in ICE custody who are arrested throughout the U.S. interior, often for various pending criminal charges and convictions.

For example, fewer than 11,000 illegal aliens are in ICE custody today who were arrested by ICE agents within the U.S. interior. Compare that detainee population to May 2019 when more than 19,500 illegal aliens were in ICE custody after being arrested by ICE agents.

In total, more than 3-in-10 illegal aliens in ICE custody — including those arrested by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) after being arrested near the southern border — have either pending criminal charges against them or convictions.

The drafted Biden plan would make almost certain that illegal aliens with such convictions and pending criminal charges are released into the U.S. interior under the guise of a lack of funding for the agency.

Last week, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden may gut the number of deportations carried out by ICE agents unless the House and Senate passed billions in funds for DHS to more quickly get border crossers into the U.S. interior and the NGOs that aid the process.

As Breitbart News has chronicled, Biden has consistently cut deportations of even the most violent criminal illegal aliens. The latest ICE data shows that Biden is deporting about one illegal alien for every 70 illegal aliens arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border.

ICE deportation figures for Fiscal Year 2023 also reveal that the nation’s 11 to 22 million illegal aliens have very few chances of being deported. For example, last year, illegal aliens had a fewer than five percent chance of being deported from the U.S. by ICE agents. ##

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