The Biden regime is processing “large numbers of single adult illegal immigrants” in a small, unmarked office in Brownsville, Texas, and then releasing them into the United States, Fox News’ Bill Melugin reported on Tuesday.
Video footage captured on Sunday showed “several federally contracted buses dropping off dozens of mostly male migrants at a parking garage” in the Texas border town, Melugin reported, noting that black tarps were set up to block the public from seeing what was going on. At least some of the illegal aliens had just crossed the border that morning, he said.
Fox witnessed men go into a small, unmarked office, then re-emerge moments later as multiple taxi cabs then showed up to collect the migrants — who were then shuttled off to nearby Harlingen Airport.
Melugin said the footage shows only single adults—no children or migrant families—which is noteworthy because single adults are supposed to be expelled from the country via the Trump-era Title 42 public health protections.
Several of the migrants told Fox that they had crossed illegally that morning, paying approximately $2,000 per person to cartel smugglers. They also said they were flying to destinations including Miami, Houston and Atlanta.
Single adults are typically being expelled via Trump-era Title 42 public health protections. The Biden administration kept Title 42 in place but is not applying it to unaccompanied children or most migrant families. However, single adults have long been the easiest category of migrant to deport.
In a statement to Fox News, the city of Brownsville said its Office of Emergency Management, through federal assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), works to facilitate “the transfer of these migrants to their final destination by allowing them to use services to contact their families, NGOs, or a taxicab.”
It confirmed that the parking garage serves as a staging area for migrants to be given travel information to “facilitate their transfer to their final destinations.” Migrants can also be given a health screening there, a spokesperson said.
NEW: We witnessed the federal gov mass releasing single adult migrants, almost all men, at a parking garage in Brownsville. Taxi cabs were then called for them. We followed the taxis to Harlingen airport, where the migrants were dropped off to get on flights around U.S. @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/HcSSwtjMnR
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) January 25, 2022
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) told Fox its agency was not involved in the release. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) source said he believed it was an ICE release.
Last week, CBP released its December border numbers showing 178,840 migrant encounters in December, up from 173,620 in November, and 164,753 apprehensions in October. In Dec. of 2020, there were 73,994 migrant encounters at the border.
On Friday, the Biden Regime announced that it has expanded Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program, after it had initially abolished the successful policy.
Upon taking office, Biden immediately began unraveling the program and officially ended last June.
But a federal court order ordered the Trump-era policy to be reinstated after Texas and Missouri sued, claiming that the administration had improperly scrapped it. The Supreme Court upheld that order.
A DHS spokesperson confirmed to Fox that enrollments in the program, officially called the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), began on Jan. 19 in the sector, with migrants being returned to Mexico via the Brownsville port of entry. Migrants are also being returned from San Diego and El Paso. CBS News first reported the expansion into RGV [the Rio Grande Valley sector]
The Biden regime, however, remains adamantly opposed to the policy.
The DHS spokesperson told Fox News that DHS “has repeatedly sought to terminate MPP.”
“DHS currently is, however, under a court order to reimplement MPP in good faith. DHS continues to fight in the courts, including in a pending challenge before the Supreme Court. In the interim, DHS is committed to abiding by the court-mandated reimplementation of MPP in the most humane way possible,” the spokesperson said.