Immigration

Border Patrol Released Illegals Into The US And Didn’t Track Them, Watchdog Finds

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The U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) released illegal migrants into America and did not properly track them, according to a Monday government watchdog report.

USBP failed to assign alien registration numbers (A-numbers) to 107 of 384 illegals in fiscal year 2021, which provides a complete history of a migrant’s immigration encounters, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) inspector general report. All but three of the 107 migrants were paroled or issued a Notice to Report (NTR), which is a document telling migrants to go to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office within 60 days, the report said.

“They’re not doing proper vetting,” Mark Morgan, former acting commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) under former President Donald Trump, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “If you have illegal aliens that are coming in from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, do you think they’re getting their criminal histories? There’s no way and yet there was no mention of that in the report.”

USBP agents are required under a 2015 rule to fill out A-numbers for illegal migrants during their processing phase. The seven-to-nine-digit number is intended to be listed on U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) documents.

The A-numbers were not assigned because USBP was “trying to expedite processing and move migrants out of Border Patrol facilities that were over capacity,” according to the watchdog report.

The new report comes on the heels of USBP officials and their union’s president telling the Daily Caller News Foundation on Aug. 31 that the White House is lying when it says illegals don’t walk “over” the border. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre made the claim while in a tense exchange with Fox News reporter Peter Doocy, who was asking why unvaccinated migrants are allowed to enter the country when the unvaccinated tennis player Novak Djokovic is not.

“As Border Patrol continues to process large numbers of migrants at the Southwest Border, conducting and evaluating the results of record checks is imperative to ensure migrants with aggravated criminal histories, gang or drug cartel affiliations, or terrorist watch list records are not permitted to be released into the United States,” said the watchdog report. “Further, Border Patrol’s informal and expedited practices for processing migrants could jeopardize the Government’s ability to track migrants released into the United States and ensure migrants appear for immigration proceedings.”

USBP encountered individuals on the U.S. terror watchlist 78 times between ports of entry between October and August, according to CBP data released Monday. USBP has encountered over 2 million migrants at the southern border in fiscal year 2022 so far, a record breaking statistic.

“Because DHS continues to experience surges, it is critical that Border Patrol establish formal policies detailing expedited processing procedures to ensure proper documentation of screening procedures and adequate tracking of migrants released into the United States,” the inspector general report also said.

DHS did not respond to a request for comment nor did CBP.