by WorldTribune Staff / 247 Real News June 3, 2024
Since 2022, the Biden administration has quietly closed more than 350,000 asylum cases filed by migrants.
Under a program that critics are calling secret “mass amnesty,” the illegals are not granted or denied asylum. Their cases are “terminated without a decision on the merits of their asylum claim,” meaning they are removed from the legal system and no longer required to check in with authorities.
The move by Team Biden allows the illegals to roam the U.S. without fear of deportation.
Once cases are dismissed, the illegals are no longer monitored by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and are no longer required to regularly check in with ICE, unlike those still pursuing asylum claims.
“If the case gets dismissed, you’re basically back to nothing,” Washington-based immigration lawyer Hector Quiroga told The Post.
ICE officers who spoke with The Post flagged an increase in cases of migrants committing crimes after their asylum cases have been closed. This forces agents to restart removal proceedings, which typically take years.
“If the migrants, [whom] ICE no longer controls or monitors, commit crimes after the dismissal, ICE will have to start all over and issue a new Notice to Appear in court and start the clock all over again,” an ICE official told The Post.
“It’s starting to increase,” a second ICE officer told The Post.
A third ICE officer told The Post that it “happens all the time.”
“This is just a massive amnesty under the guise of prosecutorial discretion,” Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge who works for the Center for Immigration Studies, told the New York Post. “You’re basically allowing people who don’t have a right to be in the United States to be here indefinitely.”
In 2020, during the Trump administration, 48,000 migrants were ordered removed from the U.S. by immigration court judges. Fewer than 20,000 people were granted asylum, and 4,700 people had their cases closed or were otherwise allowed to remain in the country, according to data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).
In 2022, under Biden, a memo issued by ICE’s principal legal adviser, Kerry Doyle, and seen by The Post instructed prosecutors at the agency to allow cases to be dismissed for migrants who aren’t deemed national security threats. That year, 36,000 were ordered removed, 32,000 were awarded asylum, and 102,550 had their cases dismissed or otherwise taken off the books.
In 2023, there were 149,000 cases in this latter category, and so far in financial year 2024 — which ends Sept. 30 — the numbers are certain to surpass that, with 114,000 cases closed already.
Since January 2021, 77% of asylum seekers have been allowed to remain in the country, according to TRAC. That equates to 499,000 of the 648,000 who applied for asylum in the U.S. in that time.
The current backlog of asylum cases stands at 3.5 million, and shaving more than 100,000 people a year off it makes the administration look better, sources told The Post.
‘Mass amnesty’: While we weren’t looking, Team Biden terminated 350,000 asylum cases added by Editor Two on
View all posts by Editor Two →