The government is refusing, in violation of the law, to give figures on how many illegal immigrants are enrolled in two programs that are Alternatives to Detention and which were initiatives of the Biden administration, The Washington Free Beacon reported Wednesday.
The two initiatives — the Case Management Pilot Program and Young Adult Case Management Program — are government offers to illegal immigrants.
Even though Immigration and Customs Enforcement is mandated by law to publish the numbers enrolled in each of those programs, it has not yet done so.
Federal law also requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain all aliens who arrive in the U.S. illegally, but increased numbers of border crossings often make this difficult, and so in 2004, ICE created Alternative to Detention programs to ensure aliens with deportation orders are removed from the U.S.
More than 322,700 aliens were put in Alternative to Detention programs by the end of the 2022 fiscal year, according to federal data, but that figure does not include those enrolled in the Case Management Pilot Program and the Young Adult Case Management Program.
Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Simon Hankinson, who is a former foreign service officer, told the Free Beacon that the two programs "are attempts to divert [Alternatives to Detention] funding away from law enforcement based on data and towards social services."
He added that "the lack of clear, long-term reporting from Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Alternatives to Detention numbers and final case outcomes via each option obscures proper assessment of the programs. Given the Department of Homeland Security director Alejandro Mayorkas' policy of severely reducing interior enforcement, this seems deliberate."
As part of GOP efforts to get rid of these programs, Republican Sens. Roger Marshall of Kansas and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee last November demanded that senior DHS officials provide more details on the "criteria for an alien to be considered for the Case Management Pilot program," as well as the social services the program provides.
The senators also voiced concerns that "taxpayer money" is being spent on "NGOs espousing rhetoric aimed at frustrating and dismantling immigration enforcement and our nation's borders."
National Immigration Center for Enforcement president R.J. Hauman said that the American people should be outraged that their tax dollars are being funneled through ICE to provide social services to illegal aliens.
He added that "rather than helping the men and women of ICE enforce the law, the Biden administration is actively undermining them and turning to radical NGOs with no law enforcement background."
DHS did not respond to a request for comment.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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