NEWS
ICE official: 108,500 undocumented immigrants released in the last three months
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Guillermo Contreras March 25, 2019 Updated: March 26, 2019 6:50 a.m.
The federal government has released more than 108,000 undocumented immigrants inside the United States in the past three months, a top U.S. immigration official said Monday.
Ronald Vitiello, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the wave of immigrants, largely from three Central American countries — El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala — is creating a crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The migrants are being released, with notices to appear later before immigration judges, because detention facilities are at capacity, Vitiello said. ICE later added that the crush on the feds’ ability to transport immigrants to detention facilities, and an agreement on how long asylum-seekers can be held also contributed to the releases.
Vitiello said many of the immigrants will not return to court for determinations on whether they can remain here legally.
“Unfortunately, that is … exactly what is happening,” Vitiello said. “The numbers of people coming to the border, children with their families or children coming alone, is overwhelming the entire system.”
Vitiello made the remarks in an interview with the San Antonio Express-News ahead of his opening keynote speech Tuesday at the Border Security Expo at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center. The expo continues through Wednesday.
The wave of immigrants is creating a humanitarian crisis in local border communities and taxing the resources within Homeland Security, including ICE, Vitiello said.
Generally, migrants seeking asylum who turn themselves in at the border are held for processing for a short period by the Border Patrol. “Then, depending on who they are and their demographics, they are turned over to us and eventually released if they’re a family unit,” Vitiello said.
During an initial crush of Central American immigrants in 2014, ICE — under the Obama administration — turned to holding immigrant families at detention facilities called family residential centers. The two largest are in Dilley and Karnes City, both about an hour from San Antonio.
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Vitiello said that, because of the complexities of immigration law, and rulings enforcing a 1997 court agreement known as the Flores agreement, ICE had to adjust because it cannot hold immigrant families longer than 20 days while they seek asylum.
That is not enough time for them to go before immigration judges to get their asylum claims adjudicated, so the facilities are now being used instead for immigrant families whose asylum claims have already been rejected and are in the process of being deported. That process lasts less than 20 days. The facility in Dilley had a population Monday of 1,528 and the one in Karnes had 110.
“What (the family residential center) was built for in 2014, now that situation doesn’t exist,” Vitiello said.
With no capacity to hold asylum-seeking family units longer than 20 days, they are being released.
“In the last 90 days…. ICE has released 108,500 family units in the U.S.,” Vitiello said.
https://www.expressnews.com/news/local/article/ICE-official-108-500-undocumented-immigrants-13715903.php