GAMER LYING LAWYER JOE BIDEN:
Despite plummeting approval ratings from voters, Democrats remain committed to the most liberal border policy in generations. In October, Senate Democrats proposed an appropriations bill that would slash Funding for Customs and Border Protection by half a billion dollars. ICE would have $40 million cut from its previous annual budget.
Congressmen Say Biden Withholding Deportations Report To Cover Up Extent of Border Crisis
Rep. Jackson: Failure to release report 'nothing more than a calculated attempt to minimize transparency'
President Joe Biden’s unprecedented failure to release a report on the number of illegal immigrants deported in 2021 prompted outrage from congressional Republicans who accused the White House of trying to cover up the crisis on the southern border.
The Washington Free Beacon reported Wednesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement failed to release the annual report by the end of the calendar year for the first time since 2011. It is unclear if the tardy ICE report has been completed; an ICE spokeswoman told the Free Beacon that the agency’s plans to publish the late report are up in the air.
Rep. Ronny Jackson (R., Texas) told the Free Beacon that the Biden administration’s decision to "ignore their responsibility to publish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Annual Report" is "shameful." Jackson added that Biden’s "open border agenda has caused and exacerbated the worst border crisis we’ve ever seen and Biden is doing everything he can to cover it up."
Jackson said the move to not release the report "is nothing more than a calculated attempt to minimize transparency and cover up their wrongdoings," referring to GOP criticism over the Biden administration's reversals of Trump-era policies such as "Remain in Mexico" and Title 42, a pandemic-related law that allowed for rapid deportations of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers. Many immigration hawks, such as Jackson, suspect that the 2021 report shows a decrease in deportations from ICE compared to previous years.
The lack of transparency from the Biden administration on the topic of illegal immigration comes after a year that saw an unprecedented surge of crossings all along the southern border. The administration also delayed issuing, then backdated, a Department of Homeland Security report on the illegal immigrant population, the Free Beacon reported earlier this week.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas) told the Free Beacon that Biden’s failure to release the number of deportations shows "a lack of seriousness for the crisis they created at our southern border." McCaul emphasized that "ICE's interior enforcement is critical in protecting our communities from bad actors who slip through initial detection. … With the crisis at the southern border, ICE's presence is needed now more than ever to enforce our immigration laws."
Rep. Troy Nehls (R., Texas), who spent decades in the military and law enforcement, told the Free Beacon that there is a direct tie between Biden’s rhetoric as a presidential candidate and the immigration crisis he is presiding over as president.
"Before President Biden was even inaugurated, he was inviting people to swarm the southern border," Nehls said. "On day one of his presidency he dismantled President Trump’s highly successful policies and look at the results: nearly two million illegal crossings from over 100 different countries, more fentanyl deaths than car crashes, and rampant crime across the country."
Nehls believes that Biden’s failures on the border will doom the Democratic Party in November. "The Biden administration is trying to hide their failure, but the American people are waking up," Nehls said. "They know we have a crisis at the southern border, they know this crisis is a direct result of President Biden’s policies, and they will voice their concern at the polls in 2022."
Following Free Beacon Story, DHS
Reveals Report on Illegal Immigrant
Population
Biden admin failed to produce report on visa overstays in 2021
President Joe Biden's Department of Homeland Security quietly released a long-awaited report on Tuesday evening detailing large segments of the illegal immigrant population that it had been keeping from the public, but backdated the report to make it look as if the agency had posted it online when it was expected last year.
The agency posted its 2020 Entry/Exit Overstay Report, which provides an exact accounting of foreign travelers with expired visas who are no longer legally allowed to be in the United States. The release comes two months after the Washington Free Beacon reported in November on the administration's failure to post the report, which the executive branch is legally required to produce annually to Congress and has in the past been promptly shared with the public. While the administration had released the report to select members of Congress, it had yet to be released to the public—a major departure from prior transparency standards.
Though the report wasn't released until Jan. 4, 2022, the DHS website backdated the release date on its website to show it was posted on Sept. 30, 2021, the date the report was submitted to Congress. In previous years, the release date on DHS's website reflects when the report was posted publicly and not when the report was first given to Congress.
DHS did not respond to a request for comment on the decision to backdate the report.
The failure to publicly release the report elicited anger from Republicans on Capitol Hill, who voiced concerns that the administration was withholding the report during negotiations over the White House spending proposals to hide the number of migrants who could receive amnesty under the president's Build Back Better plan. Sens. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) and James Lankford (R., Okla.) in December sent a letter to DHS chief Alejandro Mayorkas demanding its public release.
"We are concerned that DHS did not publish the FY 2020 Entry/Exit Overstay Report on a public website out of concerns that this report would complicate the conversation around the ‘Plan C' amnesty proposals in the Democrats’ partisan reconciliation package," Hawley and Lankford wrote. "Plan C" amnesty refers to the third attempt by Democratic lawmakers to get the Senate parliamentarian to allow the inclusion of immigration reform in their budget reconciliation bill.
The now-public 2020 report documents the "highest ‘suspected in country overstay rate' of all the public reports out there," one immigration expert who viewed the report told the Free Beacon. According to the data provided by DHS, 584,885 foreign nationals overstayed their visa, compared with 497,272 in 2019.
That record-breaking overstay rate is due to "the COVID-19 outbreak," Mayorkas says in the report, calling it "an anomaly when compared with the prevailing trend" of declining overstays over the years. He wrote that DHS "will continue to publicly release this report, at a minimum, on an annual basis," ignoring the fact that no report was published publicly last year.
Those identified as potential visa overstays in the report are not necessarily targeted for removal by immigration authorities. Congress mandated that the report be released annually to the public due to the belief that "the large number of annual in-country alien overstays threatens national security and the integrity of legal immigration."
Trump targeted visa overstay rates in an April 2019 executive order that directed DHS to "engage with the governments of countries with [high] total overstay [rates]."
The 2021 fiscal year saw more recorded illegal border crossings than at any time in U.S. history. November saw an increase in border crossings after a three-month downward trend.
Biden's handling of the visa overstay report is part of a broader culture of secrecy from the White House on the topic of immigration. The Free Beacon reported on Wednesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has yet to release its annual report detailing the number of illegal immigrants removed from the United States in 2021.
Biden Withholds Annual Report on Deportations
ICE fails to produce annual report for first time in more than a decade
The Biden administration has yet to release a report that details the number of illegal immigrants removed from the United States in 2021, keeping the public in the dark about its handling of the immigration crisis.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not release its annual report in 2021, a departure from standard agency practice since at least 2011. In each of the last nine years, ICE released the report in the final weeks of the calendar year, most recently on Dec. 23, 2020 during the Trump administration.
It is unclear whether ICE has completed the report, which provides a lengthy summary of the agency’s enforcement and removal operations, as well as immigration-related security threats. A spokeswoman for the immigration agency told the Washington Free Beacon a release date for the report has not been determined.
The absence of the 2021 annual report has prompted outrage on Capitol Hill. Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) questioned the motives behind the White House's secrecy on the topic of immigration.
"During record-breaking levels of illegal immigration, DHS and ICE have taken steps to dismantle interior enforcement operations that keep our communities safe from criminal aliens," Hawley told the Free Beacon. "I’ve been calling for transparency into these radical policy changes for months. If ICE is intentionally hiding their annual report from the public, then it’s safe to assume it doesn’t show any improvement; it shows failure."
The administration's decision not to release the ICE report marks the latest example of Biden's failure to live up to transparency standards set by both its Democratic and Republican predecessors. The Free Beacon in November reported that the White House violated a congressional statute with its failure to release its report on the number of illegal immigrants in the United States. The 2021 fiscal year saw more recorded illegal border crossings than any time in U.S. history.
This latest evasion comes as just 35 percent of voters approve of Biden's handling of immigration, according to a RealClearPolitics average of recent polls. Critics of the president's immigration policy accused Biden of hiding statistics as a way to avoid bad press.
"It's absolutely shocking that the release of the ICE report hasn't happened," former ICE chief of staff Jon Feere told the Free Beacon. "I assumed, at worst, they'd put it out on New Year’s Eve when nobody is paying attention, but even that didn’t happen."
"I can't imagine the outcry if we had not produced this report under the Trump administration," Feere said.
Much of the information provided in the agency’s annual report goes beyond deportation statistics. The 2020 report, for example, summarized results from operations related to stopping COVID-19 relief fund abuse. In fiscal year 2020, ICE and its law enforcement partners seized more than $18 million linked to pandemic-related fraud and criminal activity.
An individual familiar with the production of the report in past years, who asked not to be directly quoted, speculated that White House dysfunction may be responsible for the delay. The individual said more left-wing members of the Biden administration, such as Domestic Policy Council deputy director for immigration Esther Olavarria, may have disagreed with more "moderate" staff, such as domestic policy adviser Susan Rice, on a strategy for releasing a report that could be seen as unfavorable to Biden.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Republican lawmakers have increasingly voiced outrage over what they call a culture of secrecy from the White House. Hawley and Sen. James Lankford (R., Okla.) wrote a letter to Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last month demanding the agency release the 2020 Entry/Exit Overstay Report, which lists the number of foreign nationals in the country who overstayed their visas.
Despite plummeting approval ratings from
voters, Democrats remain committed to th
most liberal border policy in generations. In
October, Senate Democrats proposed an
appropriations bill that would slash Funding
for Customs and Border Protection by half a
billion dollars. ICE would have $40 million cut
from its previous annual budget.
Illegal Aliens, Cuban National
Accused of Running ‘Massive
Amazon Theft Ring’
Two illegal aliens and a legal immigrant from Cuba have been accused of operating a “massive Amazon theft ring” in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, police charge.
Illegal alien Cesar Yasnier Cerqueira Rojas, illegal alien Maikel Perez Laurencio, and legal immigrant Dinneris Matos Delgado were arrested and charged with 15 felony counts of possession of stolen property and embezzlement.
According to the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office, Rojas, Laurencio, and Delgado operated a theft ring whereby thousands of dollars worth of Amazon packages were siphoned from their intended destination and sent to a private residence.
“Every one of these packages was supposed to be delivered by Christmas Day,” Aaron Brilbeck with the sheriff’s office told local media. “So, 600 people didn’t get their Christmas gifts as a result of this.”
Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office
On December 30, police said they were called to an area where a report of illegal dumping was reported. Police said they found about 600 empty Amazon packages dumped on the ground and a garbage bag that included an address and receipt from a nearby store.
That is when police obtained a warrant for a residence in Luther, Oklahoma. When police raided the residence, they found thousands of undelivered Amazon packages, many of which were still fully wrapped and packaged on pallets. The packages filled every room of the residence, police said.
Based on the warrant, police allege that Rojas — who had been working as a driver for a company that delivers Amazon packages — used a truck owned by Delgato and loaded extra pallets of Amazon packages onto the truck each day and brought them to the residence rather than delivering them to their intended destination.
Police said Laurencio was involved in the theft ring and likewise worked for a driving company that contracted with Amazon to deliver packages.
Delgato was also charged with possession of meth and police said they expect more charges to be filed against all three suspects.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Biden Frees Record Number of Illegal Aliens into U.S. via ‘Catch and Release’
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