At least 160,000 people who entered the United States illegally in family groups have been released in southern border towns since December because the federal government is unable to hold the tens of thousands entering the country each month, according to the Trump administration.
“Due to such challenges, since mid-December 2018, ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] has released over 160,000 family unit members into the United States with instructions to report to a local ERO [Enforcement and Removal Operations] field office and immigration court,” according to a prepared statement by Nathalie R. Asher, acting executive associate director of ICE ERO, planned to give the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday afternoon.
The agency has just 2,500 beds for families in its custody and 60,000 immigrant families being taken into custody monthly. An unspecified number of those families are being released by Border Patrol and not transferred to ICE because CBP does not have room to take in new detainees.
Since the start of the 2019 fiscal year last October, 248,000 of the total 460,000 people who illegally entered the U.S. from Mexico were in family groups.
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ICE has 42,000 beds for single adults. Asher said the Department of Homeland Security agency has an average of between 46,000 and 48,000 single adults in its custody daily. “Truly, if we could house, if we could hold families beyond the 20 days so that we could ensure that they have their day in court … we could absolutely use more beds,” Asher said.
In 2015, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee reinterpreted the Flores settlement, which limited the length of time and conditions under which U.S. officials could detain immigrant children and ordered families to be held more than 20 days while their asylum claims are considered.
