Facing a $700 million budget shortfall, officials at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may be forced to release thousands of immigrants into the U.S. because Republicans, at the urging of Donald Trump, killed a massive bipartisan Senate bill that would have injected $7.6 billion into the agency.
“Faced with record numbers of illegal crossings at the Mexico border and mounting criticism from his own party,” The Washington Post reports, “Biden has deployed ICE officers more aggressively and ramped up deportation flights in recent months. White House officials say the administration has deported or returned 500,000 migrants since May, more than Trump did on an annual basis during his term.”
“The bill’s demise has led ICE officials to begin circulating an internal proposal to save money by releasing thousands of detainees and cutting detention levels from 38,000 beds to 22,000 — the opposite of the enforcement increases Republicans say they want.”
The $700 million deficit is “the largest projected shortfall the agency has faced in recent memory,” according to The Post. “Erin Heeter, a DHS spokesperson, said Congress has ‘chronically underfunded’ the department’s ‘vital missions on the southwest border.'”
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The huge shortfall ICE is facing will only become more dire as spring approaches and border crossings increase. The Senate bill would have prevented the release of the immigrants, for which ICE officials are now drafting plans.
“Within 48 hours of the release of a long-awaited immigration and foreign aid bill he had championed, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Republican conference rejected his pitch to support it, knifed the deal and left it for dead,” NBC News reported last week. “Just four Republicans voted for it. In the end, even McConnell backtracked and voted against the package that he had helped develop.”
U.S. Rep. Darren Soto (D-FL) responding to the Post’s report, wrote: “Instead of passing a bipartisan border deal, extreme MAGA Republicans pursued a sham impeachment. Now DHS is running short on funds to protect the homeland. The GOP isn’t interested in fixing the border, they want to sabotage it.”
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