WASHINGTON, D.C. –– Today, House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark E. Green, MD (R-TN) released a statement following a new report from the New York Post’s Jennie Taer showing that a highly touted program established by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in May 2023 has rarely ever been used to actually remove illegal aliens from the United States. Since the Family Expedited Removal Management (FERM) program was announced, Border Patrol agents have apprehended more than 842,000 individuals at the Southwest border arriving in ‘family units,’ but so far, only around 2,600 have been removed via the program, according to ICE numbers obtained by the Post. More shockingly, more illegal aliens have actually absconded from the program than been removed from the interior via the program.

Read more from Jennie Taer via the New York Post

“These numbers are further proof that the Biden-Harris administration’s policies have nothing to do with actually securing the border or enforcing the law, but instead masking its utter refusal to do either of those things. Such a dismal rate of removals makes clear that President Biden, ‘border czar’ Kamala Harris, and now-impeached DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas are committed to ignoring U.S. immigration law, while attempting to hide that fact from the American people. Ultimately, these individuals have a simple responsibility—detain and remove those who have no lawful basis to remain. You don’t need new programs to do that, just a respect for the law.”
 
Background: 

These numbers are further proof that the Biden-Harris administration has failed in its statutory responsibility to remove illegal aliens from the interior. As previously noted by the Committee, per ICE’s FY23 annual report, the Non-Detained Docket (NDD) as of September 2023 stood at 6,199,629, and now totals more than 7.4 million. At the end of FY20, NDD cases totaled roughly 3.2 million, showing that the docket has grown by more than four million since then. The current NDD number would be even higher if not for the hundreds of thousands of cases arbitrarily dismissed, in keeping with a memo issued by ICE’s principal legal adviser Kerry Doyle in 2022.

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