House Republicans raised security concerns with the Biden administration’s proposal to issue government identification cards to illegal immigrants who are released into the interior of the United States from the southern border.
Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, and 15 other Republicans sent a letter to acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tae Johnson on Friday, asking for information about the federal agency’s planned pilot program to provide ID cards and warning that it could incentivize more illegal immigration and legitimize illegal immigrants.
“This pilot program, known as the ICE Secure Docket Card program, is intended in part to help illegal immigrants circumvent checking in physically at ICE offices and more easily access benefits within the United States,” the House Republicans wrote in the letter
. “We are concerned that this pilot program is yet another Biden Administration move encouraging illegal immigration by rewarding illegal immigrants for breaking our laws.”
Axios reported last week that the Biden administration hopes to include $10 million in the fiscal year 2023 appropriations bill to get the program started before Republicans can gain back control of the House or Senate come November.
Republicans are leery of allowing illegal immigrants to check in with ICE officials virtually rather than in person, though this has been standard practice for several years.
“Committee Republicans have heard from ICE officials that many aliens enrolled in Alternatives to Detention (ATD) programs fail to check in with ICE as required and disappear into our local communities,” the letter added. “The ATD program’s failure to ensure illegal immigrants report to ICE is not a reason to issue them identification cards hoping the statistics improve, but instead an indication that more of these illegal border crossers should be detained during the pendency of removal proceedings.”
Republicans requested that ICE brief the committee on its plan and send over all documents about the program they dubbed “reckless.”
“We are concerned that identification cards will include QR codes that link to court documents and personally identifiable information related to removal cases,” the lawmakers wrote. “This raises security concerns as well as questions regarding the likelihood that significant taxpayer resources will be diverted from immigration enforcement to uploading documents into and maintaining a secure system.”
Although Democrats’ pleas in recent years to abolish ICE have gone unanswered, the agency has accomplished a minuscule amount of arrests and deportations under President Joe Biden compared to previous administrations. Arrests and deportations of illegal immigrants have bottomed out under the Biden administration, dropping in fiscal year 2021 by more than 75% compared to the record-high numbers seen during the Obama administration
, the Washington Examiner
reported
.
Just 74,082 noncitzens were arrested last year, down from surpassing 300,000 during the early years under former President Barack Obama, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute.
Because more than 11 million people residing in the U.S. are illegally present, ICE has had to prioritize arrests, typically focusing on people with criminal backgrounds, but sometimes officers encounter illegal immigrants without convictions or charges and arrest them.
Simultaneously, the number of noncitizens encountered while illegally attempting to enter the U.S. from Mexico has surged under Biden to the highest level recorded.
