The many ties between the Biden administration and immigration activist groups likely help explain why Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested only eight people out of more than 3.1 million visa overstay leads, according to a Department of Homeland Security inspector general report.
The report attributes the low number of investigations, in just 496 visa-overstay cases, in part to a September 2021 enforcement-priorities memorandum from DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Just three months before Mayorkas’ memo, a coalition known as We Are Home urged the agency to exercise broad prosecutorial discretion and choose not to pursue older immigration violations, including visa overstays.
Some coalition leaders had moved into top roles in the Biden White House and administration by the time of Mayorkas’ memo.
“Of course,” Lora Ries, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, told the Daily Signal when asked whether the immigration activist coalition likely shaped the administration’s approach. “The campaign was the administration—the same people.”
According to the OIG report, when ICE received the 3.1 million leads, it categorized only 3.3% of them (104,049) as potential national security and public safety concerns. Of these, ICE deemed 21,885 leads viable for investigation. The 496 investigations represent 2% of the leads viable for investigation.
Ries condemned the prosecutorial discretion. “Visa overstays have long been estimated to make up at least 40% of the deportable population,” she told the Daily Signal.
Under the Mayorkas framework, ICE focused on a narrow category of “Priority 1” cases, while millions of other leads were treated as nonpriority matters.
The We Are Home Campaign
Launched in January 2021, We Are Home brought together dozens of immigration-advocacy organizations, including America’s Voice, Immigration Hub, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
On June 16, 2021, three months before Mayorkas’ memo, the campaign sent an email to Mayorkas titled “Recommendations for the Use of Prosecutorial Discretion.”
The document urged DHS to presume certain categories of migrants merited prosecutorial discretion and should generally not face arrest, detention, or removal.
“DHS should decline to arrest or initiate proceedings against people who became deportable because of conduct (including unauthorized entry, visa overstay, or contact with the criminal legal system) that occurred over 3 years prior” to ICE deportation proceedings, the email states.
By the time Mayorkas drafted the memo, multiple figures associated with the We Are Home coalition groups already held influential policy positions inside the administration and the White House.
Nathaly Arriola directed We Are Home before becoming a special assistant to President Biden. Ur Mendoza Jaddou directed DHS Watch at America’s Voice before taking the helm at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Tyler Moran and Esther Olavarria, both affiliated with Immigration Hub, later held senior White House immigration-policy positions. Andrea Flores went from deputy director of immigration policy at the ACLU to the White House National Security Council.
Jaddou led the team that shaped the makeup of DHS under Biden, and Olavarria and Flores also served on that team.
The Daily Signal reached out to Arriola, Moran, Olavarria, and Flores through their current employers, but none responded. A representative for Ur Mendoza Jaddou’s current employer, the Niskanen Center, said Jaddou declined to comment.
The personnel overlap does not prove that DHS adopted We Are Home’s recommendations.
Criticism
Ken Cuccinelli, former acting deputy secretary at DHS, emphasized the ties between the campaign and the administration.
“The Biden administration clearly and on an unwritten basis entirely adopted these policies that are the deportation corollary to Biden’s open borders policy,” he told the Daily Signal in a statement Thursday. “Given the old saying that ‘personnel is policy,’ we can see by the fact that Jaddou was put in charge of USCIS, along with so many White House positions filled by these pro-criminal, pro-open borders people, that this was a conscious choice by Joe Biden and his Democratic administration.”
He accused the administration of putting “illegal aliens and their own radical politics before even the safety of the American people.”
Ries noted that the low number of visa overstay investigations “is just one indicator of how that administration intentionally refused to enforce immigration laws.”
“Their intention was not just to usher millions of illegal aliens into the country, but to keep them here permanently,” she said.
ICE’s Current Policy
As the inspector general report notes, the Trump administration rescinded the Mayorkas enforcement-priorities framework and returned to broader immigration-enforcement authority.
DHS responded to the report by highlighting three illegal aliens who overstayed their visas and went on to commit crimes.
“The degree of the Biden Administration’s dereliction of duty, which needlessly put American lives at risk, is staggering and enraging,” DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said.
DHS did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment regarding how many investigations ICE has opened into visa overstays.
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[ H/T The Daily Signal ]
