Fox News reports that the internal watchdog for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) found that nearly 200,000 illegal aliens were released from custody after giving false addresses.
The audit by the DHS’ Office of Inspector General (OIG) determined that Border Patrol agents and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers did not always record and verify the addresses given by illegal aliens prior to their release, only discovering the discrepancies after the illegals had left custody. The 177,000 invalid addresses were found during a review of 981,671 illegal alien records from March of 2021 to August of 2022; of those 177,000, at least 54,000 addresses were simply left blank.
“USBP did not accurately and effectively capture valid addresses, in part due to the large number of migrants apprehended, as well as its limited coordination with ICE and its limited authority to administer compliance with address requirements,” the inspector general reported. “ICE also did not have adequate resources to validate and analyze migrants’ post-release addresses.”
During that same year-and-a-half time period, Border Patrol gave over 430,000 illegals a Notice to Appear (NTA) prior to their release, ordering them to appear before an immigration judge for further scrutiny of their individual case. Another 95,000 illegals were released under prosecutorial discretion, and over 318,000 were released under humanitarian parole. This amounts to an average of 60,000 releases per month.
When searching records for given addresses, ICE found 97,000 apartment addresses that lacked unit numbers,another 780 addresses that were used over 20 times, and seven addresses that were recorded more than 500 times, with some of these being either federal agencies or charities. There was also one person who was given as a point of contact by over 100 illegals.
“The notable percentage of missing, invalid, or duplicate addresses on file means DHS may not be able to locate migrants following their release into the United States,” the report continued. “As the Department continues to apprehend and release tens of thousands of migrants each month, valid post-release addresses are essential.”