The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is inflating the number of illegal aliens it’s tracking through GPS monitoring by about 600 percent, according to an internal document first obtained and reported by the Daily Caller.
On Thursday, ICE Director Tae Johnson told attendees at a closed-door event that the agency is GPS tracking 8,118 illegal immigrants in the U.S. as part of its “alternatives to detention” (ATD) program. That figure is significantly lower than the 56,805 illegal immigrants the agency publicly reported it was monitoring through GPS means as of Nov. 19.
In addition to showing a 600 percent discrepancy on the number of illegal immigrants being tracked by GPS, ICE also revealed at the closed-door event that 49,459 illegal immigrants within the U.S. are not being monitored at all. Publicly, the agency says only 266 illegal immigrants are living in the U.S. without some form of monitoring, meaning there may be about 18,000 percent more unmonitored illegal immigrants inside the U.S. than the agency is publicly admitting.
Former ICE Chief of Staff Jon Feere, told the Daily Caller he believes the discrepancy is because Joe Biden’s administration is seeking to appease group’s that are opposed to ICE detention, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU was listed as an attendee at Thursday’s closed-door event.
“The Biden administration is telling their anti-enforcement friends one thing, while telling the public something entirely different,” said Feere, who now serves as the director of investigations at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
“This massive discrepancy raises the question of whether Biden’s appointees at ICE are lying about other data points,” Feere told the Daily Caller. “ICE enforcement data has been at the center of litigation over the administration’s controversial policies, but have judges been misled?”
The Daily Caller discovered these discrepancies in immigration enforcement numbers after a record-setting year for apprehensions of illegal border crossers.
In September, Vice President Kamala Harris insisted “we have a secure border” under the Biden administration.
Even without the newly discovered discrepancies in ICE GPS tracking figures, Feere is skeptical of the ATD program.
“The government routinely loses track of thousands of aliens on all forms of ATD, and it’s clear detention is critical to ensure compliance with our immigration courts,” Feere told the Daily Caller.
ICE, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Biden White House did not immediately respond to Daily Caller requests for comment about the apparent immigration tracking discrepencies.
