DHS begins tracking migrants through phones after losing track of 50,000

The Biden administration has begun tracking all illegal immigrants released at the southern border into the United States, seeking to reverse course after losing track of nearly 50,000 migrants let go from Border Patrol custody under chaotic circumstances.

Starting in the fall, the Department of Homeland Security opted to conditionally allow noncitizens to leave through a process called parole, three people familiar with the federal immigration operation told the Washington Examiner. Under parole, migrants are still being discharged from Border Patrol facilities on the border, but their records have been digitally transferred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency responsible for tracking noncitizens within the country. Those released have also been outfitted with ankle monitors or have installed a phone app that allows authorities to keep tabs on them.

The Biden administration implemented the parole policy in an attempt to stop losing track of tens of thousands of migrants as it did by relying on them to check in with the government on their own.

Until early fall, the Biden administration released many from custody with documents known as notices to report — a document telling them to check in with ICE once they reach their destination in the interior of the country. Of 100,000 released and told to report to ICE between mid-March and August, 47,000 failed to check in.

The administration had resorted to issuing notices to report asa last-ditch effort to more quickly process people in custody as illegal migration at the U.S.-Mexico border spiked. Issuing the documents allowed the Border Patrol to save time by not placing each person in court proceedings to ensure that they would appear before a judge for illegally crossing the border.

The new policy will make it easier for the government to track every person, a move that should mollify congressional Republican critics of the administration’s reliance on notices to report. At the same time, it will allow the Biden administration to avoid placing migrants in detention, as has been a top goal for Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.

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U.S. Customs and Border Protection “stopped issuing Notices to Report in November 2021 and has been working with ICE to ensure individuals released at the border are monitored under the Alternatives to Detention program,” a DHS spokesman wrote in an email Friday.

The notices to report created a headache for the DHS because it was unable to track the 47,000 who did not follow up with ICE, and it had no idea where they had gone. The DHS stopped issuing notices to report in November, the spokesman said, but data released by CBP indicate this practice stopped in late September after so many people failed to check in.

What’s worse, under the notices to report effort, no one was traceable because ICE had no information about each person. Even though Mayorkas told senators in September that those who fail to self-report to ICE “would qualify as an enforcement priority of ours,” the government now has no way to know where they are living.

The problem of unchecked releases began two months into the Biden administration. As soaring numbers of immigrants illegally crossed the southern border, the Border Patrol faced a dilemma. Although all adults, families, and children were supposed to be turned back into Mexico under a coronavirus pandemic public health policy that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended in March 2020, the Biden administration stopped turning away the majority of families and children. Without room to detain the more than half a million people it allowed into the country, U.S. border officials began releasing people while setting them up with court dates butcould not keep up with the flow of people being taken into custody. The releases needed to be accelerated. Individuals were let go before being transferred to ICE or put in legal proceedings, shaving the amount of time needed to process each person.

Before March 2021, when an illegal immigrant was released by the Border Patrol into the U.S. rather than being returned to Mexico or another country of origin, he or she was given a notice to appear, a document stating that the person had been placed in removal proceedings and was expected to show up at a future date for court.

As of January 2021, 1,321 people stopped at the border were released into the U.S. By June, 34,730 people were released either with notices to appear in court, notices to report to ICE, or through parole. That figure nearly doubled to 60,559 in July, according to federal data. In October 2021, CBP data revealed that it had stopped issuing any notices to report. Instead, the notices to appear category began ticking up from 17,766 in October to 33,267 in November. Nearly 10,000 were paroled in October and 5,600 in November.

Under parole, individuals do not need to check in with ICE after being released because ICE had placed each person or head of the family in its alternatives to detention program. Through alternatives to detention, which was used at a lesser rate before President Joe Biden took office, ICE uses technology to track and communicate with each person. Anyone who does not show up to court is in violation of the alternatives to detention agreement and may be arrested and detained by ICE. If the tracking app is deleted from a phone, ICE is notified and can take action.

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One of the upsides is that the parole program eliminates paperwork. Whereas under the notices to appear a noncitizen was placed in the court docket in the city to which they planned to travel, a person could tell the Border Patrol or ICE he or she planned to go to Seattle but instead go to Boston. Because federal officials had placed that person in the Seattle immigration court system, it meant more paperwork to transfer him or her to the Boston docket. Now, each person paroled will inform ICE of their final destination. Those who do not are able to be tracked.