Joe Biden’s DHS Losing Track of Almost 20% of Border Crossers Freed into U.S.

President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is losing track of nearly two in ten border crossers released into the United States, a report from federal investigators suggests.

DHS Inspector General (IG) Joseph Cuffari issued his office’s audit of the agency’s massive Catch and Release network, through which officials are supposed to keep contact with the tens of thousands of border crossers they release into American communities every month.

According to the IG report, from March 2021 through August 2022, Biden’s DHS lost track of more than 177,000 border crossers released into the U.S. interior of the roughly 981,000 that were reviewed for the audit.

The report states:

U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) cannot always obtain and does not always record migrant addresses, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) does not always validate migrant addresses prior to migrant release into the United States. [Emphasis added]

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In addition to migrants not providing U.S. release addresses, DHS faced several challenges hindering its ability to record and validate migrant addresses as required. USBP did not accurately and effectively capture valid addresses, in part due to the large number of migrants apprehended {snip} [Emphasis added]

{snip} Some addresses recorded by DHS officials, where border crossers said they would be living, were restaurants, bus stops, car dealerships, and churches, among other invalid addresses.

Even in cases where border crossers provided legitimate addresses to DHS officials, the overwhelming majority, 80 percent, “were recorded at least twice during an 18-month period, some of which were provided by families upon release” while “more than 780 of these addresses were used more than 20 times.”

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