President Joe Biden has already ordered significant changes to US immigration policy. But he has not issued an order that Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan claims he did.
Jordan said on Facebook and Twitter on Saturday [January 2021] that Biden issued a new order to release "all" undocumented immigrants. Similarly, Jordan said in a Monday interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that Biden "has decided he's going to release 14,000 illegals." Fourteen thousand is the approximate number of people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention around the country.
Jordan's source for these assertions was a viral article on conservative website Breitbart News – which has been shared tens of thousands of times on Facebook alone -- about an email sent on Thursday morning by an ICE official in Houston.
The email included the words "release them all, immediately." But Breitbart and then Jordan took the words way out of context.
Facts First: Neither Biden nor his administration has ordered the release of everybody in ICE detention; ICE confirmed to CNN that the viral claim is inaccurate. The Department of Justice said in a Monday court filing that certain immigrants recently released by ICE in Texas were people particularly vulnerable to harm from Covid-19, who have special pandemic-era protections under a court order from last year. The "release them all, immediately" directive in Houston -- which was rescinded in another internal email the next day -- was about these high-risk detainees in particular, an ICE official said in yet another internal email.
We don't have the full story about what happened with these Texas releases or with the email exchange. But it's already clear that there is no basis for the claim that Biden has mandated a mass release of every single person in ICE facilities across the US.
ICE said in a statement that it "continues to make custody determinations on a case by case basis." An ICE official who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity confirmed explicitly that there is no Biden order to release everyone.
A spokesman for Jordan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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The Thursday email that sparked the controversy was written by an "assistant officer in charge" of enforcement and removal operations in ICE's Houston field office, whose name was redacted in the Justice Department court filing. The email said that they needed to stop removing immigrants from the country by midnight -- Biden's administration had ordered a 100-day deportation freeze to take effect no later than Friday -- and then continued: "Check the HRD at 1300hrs for new review decisions. Release them all, immediately."
Contrary to the Breitbart article, that did not mean that all undocumented immigrants around the country, or even at any Houston facility, were to be released immediately. Rather, according to another internal email released by the Justice Department in court, "HRD means High risk detainees" -- specifically, detainees at high risk for Covid-19.
This Friday email, written by an ICE assistant director whose name was also redacted, explained that the high-risk detainees "are Fraihat cases." Faour Abdallah Fraihat is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit that led a judge to order ICE last year to identify, monitor, and consider the release of detainees at elevated risk of severe harm from the coronavirus.
The Friday email said that ICE had been keeping some high-risk people in detention because "their removal was imminent." After Biden's freeze prevented these imminent deportations, however, ICE had to decide whether to keep the people in detention or let them go within the US. (Releasing people from detention does not mean they will never be deported.) (Dale 102).
House Republicans are planning to use an oversight hearing next week to attack the Biden administration on its immigration policies, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times that offers a road map for how the G.O.P. intends to further weaponize an issue that is already a main thrust of their midterm campaign message against Democrats.
The detailed, 60-page guidance memo includes misleading and provocative talking points that seek to portray migrants and refugees as perpetrators of gruesome crimes, especially those involving sexual assault, echoing the language that former President Donald J. Trump used to denigrate immigrants. It also argues that the Biden administration has been lax on illegal immigration, seeking to put Democrats on the defensive on the issue.
It comes as Democrats are growing increasingly concerned that President Biden’s immigration policies, including the recent decision to lift pandemic-era border restrictions next month, could pose a political liability for them ahead of the midterm elections.
The memo — which is marked “CONFIDENTIAL — FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY” — repeatedly insinuates that immigrants could be sex offenders, highlighting a handful of arrests at the southwestern border and of Afghan evacuees. It also misrepresents a Biden administration policy designed to humanely enforce immigration laws as one that would bar law enforcement from surveilling sex offenders near schoolyards.
Studies show that the estimated 40 million immigrants living in the United States commit crimes at rates far lower than native-born Americans.
Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of Homeland Security, is set to testify Thursday [April 28, 2022] for the first time in front of the House Judiciary Committee, just as the administration is bracing itself for a surge of migrants expected to make asylum claims at the border in late May. That is when a public health rule limiting border crossings because of the pandemic, known as Title 42, is scheduled to be lifted, unleashing a two-year backlog of claims on top of the high volume of migrants who typically come to the southwestern border in the spring.
The memo for Republicans, prepared by Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the ranking member on the committee, details how the right plans to use the hearing to portray Democrats as pushing “far-left policies” that seek to abolish all immigration enforcement and even “encourage” illegal immigration.
While Mr. Jordan’s memo was circulated confidentially among Republicans, he posted on Twitter that he planned to grill Mr. Mayorkas on Title 42 and other immigration issues (Karni and Broadwater 1-2).
For the past two years, the federal government has turned away migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, including those who are seeking asylum, using a public emergency health order known as Title 42. It was launched by the Trump administration at the start of the pandemic and continued under the Biden administration.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently announced that it plans to end Title 42 on May 23 because COVID-19 cases have decreased and vaccines are widely available. But that date is now in question because of Republican-led lawsuits aimed at keeping the policy in place.
What started as an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19 across the border has turned into a fierce debate over whether Title 42 should be continued as an immigration tool to block migrants from claiming asylum.
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According to The New York Times, Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to former President Donald Trump, had pushed the idea to invoke Title 42 at the U.S.-Mexico border as early as 2018, long before COVID-19 emerged.
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[If Title 42 is rescinded] rather than sending migrants directly to Mexico, immigration officials will process migrants arriving and determine if they have a credible asylum case or whether they qualify for any other immigration benefits that allow them to enter the country. If not, immigration agents will hold the migrants and deport them to their home countries.
Some asylum-seekers will be placed in the Migrant Protection Protocols, another Trump-era policy that forces migrants to wait in Mexico as their immigration cases make their way through U.S. courts. The Biden administration has sought to scrap the program, known as “remain in Mexico,” only to have a federal judge order it to be reinstated following a lawsuit by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard arguments on whether the White House has the right to end it and is expected to issue a ruling this year (Garcia 1-2).
The … program, known commonly as Remain in Mexico and formally as the Migrant Protection Protocols, applies to people who left a third country and traveled through Mexico to reach the U.S. border. After the policy was put in place at the beginning of 2019, tens of thousands of people waited in unsanitary tent encampments for immigration hearings. There have been widespread reports of sexual assault, kidnapping and torture.
Soon after he took office, President Biden sought to end the program. Texas and Missouri sued, and lower courts have reinstated it, ruling that federal immigration laws require returning immigrants who arrive by land and who cannot be [returned] be detained while their cases are heard (Liptak 1).
Many of the attack lines previewed in the memo are not new. Rather, they appear to be pulled from the same political playbook that Republicans have used in recent election cycles. In 2018, Mr. Trump embraced a dark, anti-immigrant message to energize conservative voters ahead of the midterm elections, raising concerns about caravans of migrants he claimed were dangerous making their trek to the southern border. The method yielded mixed results: Democrats retook control of the House that year, while Republicans gained seats in the Senate.
But Republicans have continued to hammer on an issue that not only instills fear but has the added appeal for them of causing a split within the Democratic Party. According to Mr. Jordan’s memo, he plans to accuse the administration of prioritizing “illegal aliens over American citizens” by ending Title 42.
More than 100 mostly progressive Democrats have demanded that Mr. Biden lift the border restrictions, which they say his administration has used to abuse Black migrants, while centrist Democrats, including nearly a dozen in the Senate, have called for the restriction to stay in place.
White House officials have noted that ending the restriction simply means reverting to a standard immigration processing system that has been in place across multiple administrations. They have also pointed out that the result will be that more people are deported.
Still, the decision to end the pandemic-era border restrictions has sown worry among many Democratic lawmakers running for re-election in competitive districts. They have warned the administration that a surge in border crossings could feed voter anxiety in their districts about crime and chaos at the border.
Progressive Democrats counter that any effort to further extend the restrictions could depress turnout among Latino voters. In a recent poll conducted by the Immigration Hub, about 20 percent of Latino respondents said that immigration was the issue that would decide their vote.
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Mr. Jordan’s document … suggests that just months after Republicans joined Democrats in pushing for legislation to help rush to the United States thousands of Afghans who were facing retribution for having helped American troops, the G.O.P. is demonizing such refugees (Karni and Broadwater 2-3).
Representative Jim Jordan accused on Thursday the Biden administration of 'deliberately' and 'intentionally' causing the southern border crisis as Republicans tore into Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for being 'out of touch' and a 'traitor.'
The House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member said during his opening statement that Mayorkas will face questions on why he implemented policies that led to the chaos.
'It's intentional, it has to be,' Jordan said at the top of his remarks to the body on Thursday morning.
'The chaos on our southern border is not an accident,' the Ohio Republican congressman continued. 'It's deliberate, it's on purpose, it's by design.'
'President Biden on Day One said there'll be a moratorium on deportations, he ended Remain in Mexico, he terminated agreements with Northern Triangle countries and he stopped building the wall,' Jordan rattled off. 'Those policies, done intentionally, have led to all kinds of bad outcomes.'
He said: 'Americans want legal immigration. President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas want illegal immigration. They want illegal migrants to come, stay and never go home. Now, the secretary won't say that. In fact, he says everything's just fine. He said it yesterday in two congressional hearings. He said it last September. Quote, 'The border is secure,' he told us.'
Mayorkas appeared before the House Appropriations DHS Subcommittee and House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday to justify the administration's request for $97.3 billion for the department's budget in Fiscal Year 2023.
He said the money would go toward investing in meeting the 'the shifting field landscape' at the border and on other national security fronts – like from domestic and foreign terrorism and cyber attacks.
During those hearings, Mayorkas was lambasted by Republicans after he said the administration is 'effectively managing' the situation at the southern border.
In March alone, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered 221,303 migrants crossing the southern border. This figure is the highest in more than two-decades and the biggest spike since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021.
The previous high was in July 2021, when CBP encountered 213,593 migrants.
Colorado Republican Representative Ken Buck told Mayorkas during the Judiciary hearing on Wednesday: 'My constituents want you impeached because they believe you've committed treason.'
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Two months after the highest crossings of 2021, Mayorkas insisted that the border was secure and said that the administration was carrying out its plan at the southern crossings.
'Mr. Secretary, if over 200,000 a month and all of the ramifications that has with drugs coming into the country and other people coming into the country because our agents are so focused on that – if that's a secure border, then you are completely, completely out of touch with the American people,' Jordan charged.
'We have a secretary of Homeland Security who is intentionally, deliberately, in a premeditated fashion executing a plan, his words, executing a plan to overwhelm our country with millions and millions of illegal migrants,' he added.
'Executing a plan that causes all kinds of harm to people who make the journey, executing a plan that results in record levels of fentanyl and other drugs entering our nation, executing a plan that stresses our border agents, stresses our education and healthcare system, stresses out nation.'
'All done intentionally,' he concluded.
Jordan then played a three-and-a-half-minute video montage that ended with two slides reading: 'Every town is a border town' and 'The Biden administration owes you answers.'
The video featured news reports from local stations, Fox News and NewsNation that showed migrants dying trying to cross the border, terrorists making it through the barriers, U.S. border agents dying in the line of duty and a slew of drugs intercepted from smugglers (Caralle 1-2).
Works cited:
Caralle, Katlyn. “Republicans Tear into 'Out of Touch' DHS Secretary Mayorkas for 'DELIBERATELY Trying To Overwhelm the US with Millions of Illegal Migrants', Accuse Him of 'Treason' and Ask: 'Are You Ashamed of What You Have Done to This Country?'.” Daily Mail.com, April 28, 2022. Net. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10763645/Jim-Jordan-tears-touch-DHS-Secretary-Mayorkas-DELIBERATELY-overwhelming-US.html
Dale, Daniel. “Fact check: Jim Jordan Falsely Claims Biden Ordered the Release of All Undocumented Immigrants.” CNN, January 28, 2021. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/27/politics/fact-check-biden-order-release-immigrants-ice-jim-jordan-breitbart/index.html
Garcia, Uriel J. “Here’s What You Need To Know about Title 42, the Pandemic-Era Policy That Quickly Sends Migrants to Mexico.” Texas Tribune, April 29, 2022. Net. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/04/29/immigration-title-42-biden/
Karni, Annie and Broadwater, Luke. “G.O.P. Memo Shows Road Map for Attacking Democrats on Immigration.” New York Times, April 21, 2022. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/21/us/jim-jordan-republicans-memo-immigration.html
Liptak, Adam. “Supreme Court Struggles over Biden’s Bid To End ‘Remain in Mexico’ Program.” New York Times, April 26, 2022. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/26/us/politics/supreme-court-remain-in-mexico.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-us-immigration&variant=show®ion=MAIN_CONTENT_1&block=storyline_top_links_recirc
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