Just in case Americans were beginning to feel blasé about the record speed with which President Donald Trump has reestablished control of our borders, we were reminded of just how lawless, chaotic and dishonest America’s immigration enforcement was under Joe Biden.
Todd Lyons, Trump’s acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, recently investigated his agency’s operations under its previous management and found something disturbing.
“We have uncovered that the previous administration … was cooking the books on ICE data,” Lyons told reporters. “They were purposely misleading the American people by categorizing individuals processed and released into the interior of the United States as ICE arrests.”
According to Lyons, an internal ICE review found tens of thousands of cases that were recorded as arrests were actually cases where people illegally in the country were simply processed and released into American communities.
A majority of the 113,431 arrests of illegal aliens in FY2024, senior officials said, were classified as “pass-through arrests.” In other words, ICE agents didn’t take any enforcement action against those who were arrested, instead passing them through ICE and releasing them into the U.S. interior and told to report to an ICE office.
Just as Captain Renault was shocked that gambling was going on in Rick’s Café Americain in Casablanca, the American people should be similarly shocked that fraudulent data collection was going on in Joe Biden’s ICE. Biden and his deputies never wanted to enforce the nation’s immigration laws and secure its borders.
During his time as Barack Obama’s vice president, Biden – with his future Homeland Security boss Alejandro Mayorkas by his side – told an audience in a shameless disclosure about his goal of “an unrelenting stream of immigration, nonstop.” The bogus reports of arrests were just a fig leaf to protect the administration from criticism it richly deserved for sabotaging our nation’s border security.
Such deception was on brand for the Biden White House, which routinely engaged in gaslighting and other gimmickry to hide its border policies that are deeply unpopular to a majority of Americans. The administration touted the CBP One phone app in 2023 as a solution to turn “irregular migration,” i.e., illegal immigration, into “regular” immigration. The idea was that migrants could first use the app to submit photos and information prior to reaching the border, then use it to schedule an appointment with Customs and Border Protection officials at a port of entry.
The stated purpose was to reduce the chaos at the border caused by the more than 10 million illegal border crossings during Biden’s term. While the program may have created the superficial appearance of less chaos at the border, the result was still tens of thousands of noncitizens being admitted into the United States every month.
Since CBP One’s rollout in January 2023 through April 2024, more than 591,000 migrants used it to schedule appointments at U.S. ports of entry. So border crossings may have seemed to be down when, in fact, they were just reclassified as CBP One crossings. The Trump administration has since repurposed the app to enable illegal alien self-deportation.
One of the most shameful moments of the Biden presidency – a designation with many candidates – came in September 2021 when his administration fanned the flames on the allegation that mounted border agents whipped Haitian migrants near Del Rio, Texas.
Without any facts, due process, or investigation, Biden went before the press and accused the agents of “strapping” migrants and vowed that the agents would “pay.” The man who took the photograph said no such whipping incident occurred, and a subsequent internal affairs investigation cleared the agents of the whipping charge. Neither Biden nor anyone in this administration have ever apologized for tarnishing the agents’ reputations or admitted there was a rush to judgment.
It is not surprising that the usual Trump critics are hyperventilating over what they see as excessive moves to counter mass illegal migration into the country. Given the wanton neglect, sabotage and chicanery of the Biden immigration policies, Trump’s actions are not only popular, they are desperately needed.
This article was originally published at www.thecentersquare.com
