Republican Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford is demanding answers from the Biden administration over inaccurate data on illegal immigrants released into the U.S. that the Daily Caller News Foundation previously exposed, according to a letter exclusively obtained by the DCNF.
Lankford asked that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) provide information about its process for providing data on illegal immigrants released from federal custody, according to the letter. The DCNF previously discovered that ICE was publishing erroneous data on the number of illegal immigrants released into the U.S. with GPS monitoring and without any tracking technology as part of the agency’s Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program. (RELATED: Republican Rep. Andy Biggs Introduces Impeachment Articles Against Mayorkas)
The DCNF found that ICE was underreporting the number of illegal immigrants released without tracking technology by more than 18,000%. The agency also was misreporting the number of illegal immigrants released with GPS tracking devices by roughly 600%.
The agency subsequently corrected the data and apologized for the errors.
Ron Rogers/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. FACES OBSCURED AT SOURCE.
“It has come to my attention that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may have been providing the public with inaccurate data regarding the populations of migrants who are monitored through ICE’s Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program. According to these reports, ICE significantly overstated the population that is being monitored by the Global Positioning System (GPS) ankle monitor technology,” Lankford wrote.
ICE also recently said it has “no records” of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants released into the country with electronic monitoring, in response to a request from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). Lankford expressed concerns about that issue as well in his letter.
“I am concerned that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) may have filed ICE’s inaccurate data on ATD to either special masters who assess ICE’s compliance with settlement agreements and stipulations or to judges as part of briefings in immigration litigation. It is possible that ICE’s long-standing data integrity issues have led to false or misleading court filings in these cases,” Lankford wrote.
Lankford’s letter comes after U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had its highest month on record with more than 250,000 migrant encounters in December. CBP also recorded more than 2.3 million migrant encounters in fiscal year 2022.
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