Biden Admin Isn’t Telling The Public How Many Illegal Immigrants Are Enrolled In Key ICE Programs

• The Biden administration isn’t publicly disclosing data showing the number of illegal immigrants enrolled in key monitoring programs, according to a review of agency data.
• An ICE spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Aug. 3 that she would look into the issue, but has not yet provided the information.
• “The administration is definitely violating the law by not publishing the numbers. Congress needs to demand oversight and require all the numbers. How many are enrolled and how many have absconded since enrolled,” Former ICE Field Office Director John Fabbricatore, who served more than two decades in the federal government and is now an advisory board member at the National Immigration Center for Enforcement (NICE), told the DCNF of the data issue.

The Biden administration isn’t publicly disclosing the number of illegal immigrants that are in two of its signature Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) monitoring programs, according to a review of the agency’s data.

There is no public data showing how many illegal immigrants are enrolled in ICE’s Case Management Pilot Program (CMPP) and its Young Adult Case Management Program (YACMP), which are both part of the agency’s Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program that launched in 2004. More than 322,000 illegal immigrants were enrolled in ATD by the end of fiscal year 2022, according to ICE data, which doesn’t account for the number of participants in the YACMP and CMPP programs.

ICE Spokeswoman Alethea Smock said she would look into the transparency issue, but that the data may not be available until the end of the fiscal year, in an Aug. 3 correspondence with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Let me do a bit of research on where this is available publicly. Generally, our annual report is published Dec. 1 after the close of the fiscal year meaning 2023 data may not be available until then,” Smock, who still hasn’t provided the requested information, told the DCNF.

The number of ATD participants accounts for those monitored using tracking technology, according to ICE’s website.

“The administration is definitely violating the law by not publishing the numbers. Congress needs to demand oversight and require all the numbers. How many are enrolled and how many have absconded since enrolled,” Former ICE Field Office Director John Fabbricatore, who served more than two decades in the federal government and is now an advisory board member at the National Immigration Center for Enforcement (NICE), told the DCNF of the data issue.

“This is a feel good repackaged juvenile coordinator program that someone is using as a bullet point for promotion. The absconded rate is high for the older juveniles with many running away and escaping the program only to find them later on involved in drug trafficking,” Fabbricatore added.

CMPP, which was launched in August 2021, is run by nongovernmental organizations to provide voluntary support for illegal immigrants helping them find legal services, social service providers and federal agencies for compliance purposes. YACMP, which launched in January, serves illegal immigrants ages 18 and 19 who are deemed to be low flight risks by helping them connect with social services.

YACMP bars electronic monitoring of participants’ locations, according to ICE.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) tasked Church World Service, which has called to abolish ICE, with leading CMPP.

Former ICE Chief of Staff during the Trump administration Jon Feere believes the Biden administration is intentionally shielding data from the public’s view, he told the DCNF.

“The Biden administration is extremely hostile to transparency because they know what they’re doing is wildly unpopular, dangerous, and in conflict with ICE’s mission. We had press conferences all the time at ICE under the Trump administration, and I worked to put all sorts of data online for the first time in the agency’s history. Since then, much of the data is no longer being published and I don’t think there’s been a public immigration event at ICE since Biden took office,” Feere, who is now the director of investigations at the Center for Immigration Studies, said.

“I drove an effort to produce the first ever ICE report on ATD and what we found was that thousands of illegal aliens were absconding under the program each month and that there was no significant benefit to the agency despite costing taxpayers about $1.5 billion since 2005. I’m not surprised that the Biden administration isn’t interested in publishing the results of their expanded non-detention schemes. They aren’t designed to create compliance with federal law – the goal is to transform DHS into a social services program for illegal aliens,” Feere added.

ICE has a roughly $74 million contract until 2027 for YACMP that was recently amended to include families in the program, the DCNF first reported.

In September 2022, ICE awarded Acuity International, which was formerly known as Caliburn International and oversees Comprehensive Health Services, the contract. Comprehensive Health Services operated a facility for migrant children that came under the scrutiny of a group of Democratic lawmakers who said it had a “history of overcrowding and poor conditions.”

“These ATD programs make it clear that Congress must impose consequences for violations. If compliance is actually the goal, there should be criminal punishment for absconding from ATD and any pending immigration case should be immediately and permanently cancelled, with a prohibition on the alien ever returning to the United States,” Feere said.