The Biden administration is going to send court docs to at least 78,000 immigrants who crossed the border illegally and were released into the United States without due process, CBS reported.
According to anonymous officials cited in the report, US immigration authorities are sending out packets of legal documents instructing migrants, many of whom are families with children, to appear in court before immigration judges, who will decide whether the newcomers will be permitted to stay in the country.
The so-called "Operation Horizon" strategy, reportedly devised by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), aims to deport tens of thousands of migrants who obtained ad hoc processing near the southern border. Migrants are expected to get "notices to appear," as well as other documentation, from the agency.
Since the early March surge in illegal immigration, US border officials stopped issuing notices to appear in court to tens of thousands of migrants who had been let into the US, claiming depleted resources as a reason. Instead, they sent "notices to report," or directions to appear at an ICE office in their respective destination within 60 days to continue their processing
This was due to the fact that issuing a notice to appear reportedly takes between 60 and 90 minutes, but issuing a notice to report takes only 10 minutes. What's more, a notice to report, unlike a notice to appear, does not initiate deportation proceedings in the immigration court system.
"US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is mailing charging documents to place noncitizens in removal proceedings who have been paroled or released under prosecutorial discretion by Customs and Border Protection (CBP)," the ICE statement is quoted in the report as saying. "Noncitizens are being directed to their closest ICE Field Office and will be processed using the information collected by CBP as evidence of citizenship and removability."
According to media reports, CBP had released 107,817 people without formal notices to appear in court as of September. Of those, 29,863 (or 28%) failed to report to ICE during that time period.
Thus, those who receive the documents will be directed to their nearest ICE field office, where their case will be reviewed, as well as fingerprints and photographs taken. They will also be given a court date to show up, and if they fail to do so, they may face deportation.
"Action will be taken against those that do not appear consistent with the law and Department priorities. By mailing out these charging documents, ICE is initiating removal proceedings in a timely way," the agency noted in the statement.
Republican lawmakers have questioned the legitimacy of the ad hoc "notice to report" processing and questioned how the government can monitor migrants who were not formally processed for deportation after entering the United States illegally. Some critics highlight that many migrants tend to give officials the address of those people whom they know in the country, but this does not mean that this is where migrants are going to live.
