Biden Admin Seeks To Shell Out Millions To Expand ICE Program To Help Illegal Immigrants Access Social Services

The Biden administration is spending roughly $7 million as part of a contract to expand an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) social services program for illegal immigrants that prohibits electronic tracking.

The Young Adult Case Management Program (YACMP), which launched in January, was implemented to serve illegal immigrants ages 18 and 19 who are deemed “non-dangerous, low flight-risk young adults” by connecting them with legal services, social service providers and federal agencies for compliance purposes and prohibits electronic monitoring of their locations. The roughly $74 million contract begins at the end of August and ends in 2027, and the funding for families to join the program is a recent addition, according to the contract.

Case managers working on behalf of ICE as part of the YACMP conduct monthly, bimonthly, or quarterly office visits and monthly telephonic check-ins with illegal immigrants enrolled in the program, according to the contractor’s job description.

The latest expansion of the program shows that the Biden administration is focused on placing more illegal immigrants into programs with less restrictions, director of investigations at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) Jon Feere, who served as ICE chief of staff during the Trump administration, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“As predicted, the program was never about assisting only young children. That’s just how the anti-border crowd gets its foot in the door. Their goal is to expand the social services agenda to families now, and eventually to all illegal aliens. Congress should defund this and demand results from DHS immediately,” Feere said.

There were roughly 4.5 million illegal immigrants on ICE’s non-detained docket through July 2022, more than 350,000 of which were enrolled in Alternatives to Detention (ATD), according to agency data. The YACMP is part of ICE’s ATD program, which enrolls illegal immigrants not placed into detention and monitored, either electronically or through case management.

“The goal of Biden’s anti-border appointees is to turn ICE, an enforcement agency, into a social services organization. The division overseeing this is ‘Detention Compliance and Removals’ so this massive expenditure would only be justified if it were improving detention compliance and deportations,” Feere said.

The Biden administration has also limited ICE enforcement to only allow authorities to target those deemed threats to national security, public safety and border security.

“According to the Biden administration’s data, both detention and removals have been gutted. It seems that taxpayer money would be better spent on ICE’s actual enforcement mission,” Feere said.