IG: ICE incapable of monitoring unaccompanied minors released into US

Earlier this year, Grassley led a group of 44 senators to introduce a resolution to reform ORR oversight after multiple allegations of sexual abuse of UACs were reported and more than 100,000 UACs appear to be missing, The Center Square reported.

The Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a management alert to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to make it aware of an urgent issue: ICE is incapable of monitoring hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied children (UACs) released into the country by the Biden-Harris administration.

“We found ICE cannot always monitor the location and status of unaccompanied migrant children who are released from DHS and HHS custody,” HHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari said in a memo to the deputy director of ICE.

“Without an ability to monitor the location and status of UCs, ICE has no assurance UCs are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor,” the alert states.

In response, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, requested additional information from HHS about UAC oversight, saying, “lax vetting has placed migrant children in grave danger of exploitation and abuse and makes locating these children after placement difficult, something I fear hinders the work of DHS as well.”

The DHS OIG report found that not only was ICE incapable of monitoring the location and status of all UACs but it was also incapable of initiating removal proceedings as needed.

ICE transferred more than 448,000 UACs to the care of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is responsible for their care, from fiscal years 2019 to 2023. Over the same time period, ICE neglected to issue notices to appear (NTAs) before an immigration judge for 65% of UACs transferred from DHS custody, according to the OIG report, leaving them in limbo.

Of the 448,000 UACs who illegally entered the country and were placed with sponsors through ORR, the majority arrived under the Biden-Harris administration: roughly 366,000, or 81%, between fiscal years 2021 and 2023, Grassley notes.

The report also found that ICE agents didn’t issue NTAs for immigration court hearings to all UACs who were flagged to be removed from the country, despite being required by federal law to do so, the OIG report found.

ICE failed to issue NTAs to at least more than 291,000 UACs who should have been placed in removal proceedings but weren’t, as of May 2024, according to the report.

“ICE was not able to account for the location of all UCs who were released by HHS and did not appear as scheduled in immigration court,” the report states.

At least 32,000 UACs who were given NTAs didn’t show up to their immigration court hearing and ICE doesn’t know where they are. Additionally, ICE didn’t always inform ORR when UACs didn’t show up, contributing to multiple agencies not being able to account for their whereabouts, the report found.

To make matter worse, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officers weren’t looking for them, according to the report.

Officers from only one of eight ICE ERO field offices that OIG staff visited said they attempted to locate missing UACs.

Federal agencies not scheduling immigration court dates appears to be a consistent problem, according to several audit reports.

From January 2021 to February 2024, one audit found that 200,000 asylum or other immigration cases were dismissed because DHS didn’t file paperwork with the courts in time for scheduled hearings, The Center Square reported.

Prior to that, 50,000 illegal foreign nationals released into the U.S. by ICE failed to report to their deportation proceedings during a five-month period analyzed in 2021, The Center Square reported. ICE also didn’t have court information on more than 40,000 individuals it’s supposed to prosecute, according to the report, and more than 270,000 illegal foreign nationals were released into the U.S. “with little chance for removal” during that time period, the report found.

Not knowing the whereabouts of the UACs “occurred, in part, because ICE does not have an automated process for sharing information internally between the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA) and ERO, and externally with stakeholders, such as HHS and the Department of Justice (DOJ), regarding UCs who do not appear in immigration court,” the OIG report found.

ICE-ERO also hasn’t developed a formal policy or process to find UACs who don’t show up to their court dates, has limited oversight for monitoring them, and faces resource limitations, the OIG says. Nevertheless, “ICE must take immediate action to ensure the safety” of UACs and provide it with the corrective action it will take.

UACs who miss their court dates “are considered at higher risk for trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor,” the OIG says.

Earlier this year, Grassley led a group of 44 senators to introduce a resolution to reform ORR oversight after multiple allegations of sexual abuse of UACs were reported and more than 100,000 UACs appear to be missing, The Center Square reported.

Texas, California and Florida have received the most UACs of all states, The Center Square first reported, with each state receiving record numbers in fiscal 2023. For some states, fiscal 2023 numbers represent 20% or more of the total they received since 2015 or dwarfed previous years.

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Crime

Bukele Defends El Salvador’s Gang Reforms

Published on October 2, 2024

Todayville

From Armstrong Economics

By Martin Armstrong

Here are 23 seconds of my speech at the UN.

23 segundos de mi discurso en la ONU. pic.twitter.com/Lh3demxfUi

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) September 24, 2024

The United Nations would like the world to adhere to its lax crime laws. Generate civil unrest to destabilize nations to create a need for order, a New World Order, that will be more powerful and effective than the government. El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele began an anti-gang crusade when he entered office. Affiliated with a gang? Straight to prison.

Now, the self-proclaimed humanitarians at the Untied Nations called Bukele’s crusade extreme and demanded that he loosen his laws. “Some say that we have imprisoned thousands, but the reality is that we have freed millions. Now it is the good guys who live free, without fear, with their freedoms and human rights fully respected,” Bukele said to the counsel.

Over 82,000 gang members were arrested. Sadly, those who were not arrested fled to open border nations like the United States where they will not be deported because they are seeking asylum for their crimes. Donald Trump accurately said that declining crime in South America directly correlated to the rising crime we see in the United States.

But, it is the duty of each leader to put his or her country first. “We made our nation that was the homicide capital of the world, the safest country in the entire Western Hemisphere . It was the greatest challenge that our nation has overcome,” he added. The governor affirmed that El Salvador used to be the “most violent country in the world without war or the country of the maras” (gangs), but this changed with his crusade.” The president proudly noted that he has returned the streets of El Salvador back to the people.

Again, El Salvador cannot prevent the exodus of criminals from its border that are surging into the United States. Bukele would have had those criminals imprisoned, but Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have openly welcomed into America. The blatant corruption has been noted by everyone.

“In El Salvador we do not imprison our opposition, we do not censor opinions, we do not confiscate property of those who think differently, we do not arrest people for their expressing ideas,” the president said as a direct criticism to the Build Back Better nations that are openly silencing and arresting any politician who dares speak out against the Great Reset and New World Order agendas.

The nations with leaders brave enough to go against the global cabal are excelling. We cannot be angered by leaders who uphold the integrity of their office and put their own people and domestic policy first and foremost.

Crime

EXCLUSIVE: GOP Rep Demands Answers From FBI Over ‘Misguided’ Crime Stats

Published on October 1, 2024

Todayville

FBI Director Christopher Wray

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Wallace White

Republican Texas Rep. Lance Gooden is demanding the FBI answer questions about the alleged gaps in their recently released 2023 crime report that paints a misleading picture of crime, according to a letter provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Gooden is joined by Republican Texas Rep. Randy Weber and Republican Wisconsin Rep. Tom Tiffany in the letter questioning the FBI crime data’s validity, pointing to the agency’s past of “inaccurate claims” on crime by omitting certain department’s data from their numbers, according to the letter. The FBI data showed a 3% reduction in violent crime in 2023, which Gooden says in the letter “couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“Underreporting or misreporting crime statistics significantly impacts public perception and policy decisions, leading to a misunderstanding of crime trends, which causes unwarranted fear or complacency,” Gooden said in the letter. “Cherry-picking statistical data to deliberately mislead the public into thinking their community is safer than before would be an abhorrent act of ‘misinformation,’ especially considering the source of the misguided claim is an elite federal law enforcement agency.”

The letter asks several questions to the FBI, such as if they omitted any data from various major cities, how many agencies provided incomplete data and if the data would be retroactively adjusted to reflect an increase in violent crime, like it had in 2022 according to the Crime Prevention Research Center. In 2022, over 6,000 agencies did not report data to the FBI, accounting for 32% of all police departments in the U.S., according to the letter.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have been touting the newly released data, saying that violent crime is at a “50-year low” and crediting their American Rescue Plan bill for the alleged decrease, according to a September White House press release. Most recently, the FBI published a quarterly report that reported for the first six months of 2024 that violent crime was down 10.3% compared to the first six months of 2023, according to an FBI press release.

However, the data only counted reports from 72% of law enforcement agencies, according to the press release. It is also unclear which agencies are omitted in the quarterly report.

Another survey of crime in the nation is the National Crime Victimization Survey (NVCS) carried out by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), which showed from 2021 to 2023, the NVCS reported a 36% increase in the violent crime victimization rate, according to the report. The UCR and the NVCS differed substantially, differing by over 45% in 2022, according to the Marshall Project in 2023.

“If key data about the actual criminal activity in our cities is missing, it has not been reflected in either your claim or the accompanying press release,” Gooden said in the letter. “A selective and deliberate omission of relevant and necessary context amounts to an inexcusable case of spreading ‘misinformation’ by an agency of the Federal government.”

The FBI didn’t immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.