Republican Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond testified during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Wednesday that the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have instructed state authorities to release illegal aliens who are tied to crimes into his community.
During the hearing, which was focused on the impeachment proceedings into DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Drummond outlined a case where federal authorities instructed state law enforcement to release an illegal immigrant involved in an illegal drug bust with an active request from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for his arrest.
The DHS secretary instructed federal immigration authorities in September 2021 to practice “prosecutorial discretion” when carrying out enforcement activities, saying that actions should be limited to “national security, public safety, and border security” threats.
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“One recent drug bust at an illegal [marijuana] grow operation, our agents were processing those who had committed felonies that were being detained and those that were simply being trafficked in labor and sex, and one of those was identified as individual on an HSI detainer for illegal entry. He was supposed to be in Flushing, New York, he was supposed to have on an ankle monitor,” Gentner said.
“When we contacted the field representative in HSI, he said ‘charge him with a felony, we’ll come pick him up’ when he, in fact, had not committed a felony. Then we were instructed to say ‘Please direct him to turn himself into the nearest HSI field office, and so we did that and let him go,” Gentner said.
While encounters of illegal migrants at the southern border surpassed 2 million in fiscal year 2023, ICE officers carried out 142,580 deportations.
Mayorkas instructed federal immigration authorities that they shouldn’t take action just because an individual is “removable,” according to the September 2021 memo.
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“That happens day in and day out across Oklahoma, where we don’t have the resources afforded to detain those that we know are illegally in the state, committing crimes or complicit in the committing of crimes,” Gentner said.
The impeachment proceedings have focused on Mayorkas’ handling of the situation at the southern border and interior immigration enforcement.
“DHS numbers indicate that well over three million inadmissible aliens have been released into our country on Secretary Mayorkas’ watch. Factor in the 1.8 million known gotaways, and that’s roughly the population of the state of South Carolina,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green said in his opening statement during Wednesday’s hearing.
Green is overseeing the impeachment proceedings in the House and has conducted a months-long investigation into Mayorkas over his handling of the southern border.
“Not only has Secretary Mayorkas refused to detain these individuals, but he has also made it nearly impossible for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to remove them. His policies have largely restricted the ability of ICE to detain and remove the population of illegal aliens,” Green said.
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