President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is ending former President Joe Biden’s so-called “quiet amnesty” for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens as the agency reopens deportation cases that had previously been administratively closed.
For years under Biden, the nation’s immigration courts were instructed to dismiss deportation cases or close deportation cases for illegal aliens rather than adjudicating their asylum claims — the overwhelming majority of which are typically found to be invalid.
DHS officials, as a reversal of that Biden-era policy, are reopening deportation cases of illegal aliens who had enjoyed such dismissals or administrative closures, the Los Angeles Times reports:
Adan Rico and Torres are among thousands of immigrants who have built lives around the assumption they are safe from being detained and deported. Now they face that threat at the hands of the Department of Homeland Security, which is giving new life to administratively closed cases in a bid to step up immigration enforcement. [Emphasis added]
…
“Biden chose to release millions of illegal aliens, including criminals, into the country and used prosecutorial discretion to indefinitely delay their cases and allow them to illegally remain in the United States,” [DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin] said. “Now, President Trump and Secretary Noem are following the law and resuming these illegal aliens’ removal proceedings and ensuring their cases are heard by a judge.” [Emphasis added]
Last year, the House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement — led by Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) — issued a report detailing the scope of Biden’s “quiet amnesty” via administrative closures.
“The Biden-Harris Administration has used the immigration court backlog as an excuse to allow even more aliens to remain in the country,” their report states:
Instead of actually adjudicating illegal aliens’ cases based on the merits of aliens’ claims for relief—such as whether an alien has a valid and successful asylum claim—immigration judges under the Biden-Harris Administration have been tasked with rubberstamping case dismissals, case closures, and case terminations, all of which allow illegal aliens to remain in the United States without immigration consequences. This sort of quiet amnesty has become a staple of the Biden-Harris Administration’s immigration courts. [Emphasis added]
“Under the Biden-Harris Administration,” the report continued, “more than 700,000 illegal aliens have had their cases dismissed, terminated, or administratively closed, allowing those aliens to stay in the country indefinitely without facing immigration consequences.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.
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