As the Department of Homeland Security catches and releases illegal immigrants into the U.S., one burning question is how much authorities actually know about whom they’re releasing.
Border Patrol agents say the answer is not very much.
“Vast majority of the millions of illegal aliens [President] Biden is allowing into our country are not being properly vetted, for anything,” the National Border Patrol Council said on Twitter. “Nobody has any idea who they are, what medical conditions they have, what their records are, or what their intentions are. Period.”
That’s worrisome at a time when the numbers at the southern border are shattering records, with 10,000 people a day being caught.
One DHS source said the department paroled or released 6,000 people into the country on Thursday alone.
The department didn’t respond to a request for comment on that figure, but political appointees in the Biden administration insist that everyone they encounter is properly screened, whether they are being released or not.
“U.S. Customs and Border Protection screens and vets individuals whom we encounter,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas recently told reporters.
Blas Nunez-Nieto, his assistant secretary, echoed that to reporters on Friday: “Regardless of how we process noncitizens in our facilities, they all undergo rigorous national security and public safety vetting,”
He didn’t detail what the screening involves, but other officials say it means checking U.S. law enforcement and intelligence databases and also querying records from some countries that cooperate with the U.S.
Some countries don’t cooperate, however, which means that if the migrant has a criminal history at home, U.S. officials might miss it.
“We don’t have access to many of those countries’ records,” acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tae Johnson admitted to Congress in testimony last month.
The lack of vetting has become an issue in a key court case on border enforcement.
U.S. District Judge Kent Wetherell ruled late Thursday that the administration was stretching its parole powers too far and cannot use them to release the new border migrants. His ruling was based, in part, on the lack of vetting.
For a migrant to be paroled, DHS must make an individual assessment that a migrant has exceptional circumstances that demand admission into the U.S. even though he or she lacks a visa or other permit to enter.
That requires a public safety or national security vetting, and Judge Wetherell said it isn’t happening.
“Aliens are being released into the country on an expedited basis without being placed in removal proceedings and with little to no vetting and no monitoring,” the judge said in his Thursday ruling.
He said that was true regardless of whether parole was involved in the release.
The administration was counting on using parole as the basis for catching and releasing migrants in the current surge that it can’t immediately oust.
The parole was supposed to be a 60-day permission to be in the U.S. and to collect an immigration court summons, or Notice to Report, from ICE.
Judge Wetherell’s ruling puts that process on hold for two weeks.
Mr. Nunez-Nieto said Friday the government will comply with the order, but he also signaled that the administration is likely to appeal.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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