A record number of migrants have crossed into the United States via the Mexican border as Joe Biden claims he wants to house them all.
Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) is overseeing 5.7 million migrants in America.
Migrants could soon receive free medical services, food and even housing from the Biden administration, local reports have suggested.
The data was released in ICE’s ‘Release and Reporting Management’ programme.
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The scheme would enable migrants to take advantage of several perks at the taxpayers' expense.
The total figure is around 2.4 million more than during the last year of Donald Trump’s stint in the White House.
ICE’s initiative hopes to use vendors to monitor migrants through ankle tags, phone apps and in-person check-ins.
Former ICE director Tom Homan told The New York Post that the programme would cost “billions” as it is effectively a “welfare” scheme for non-detained migrants awaiting court dates.
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An image of the Texas National Guard on the US-Mexico borderREUTERSHe added: “The RRM is just a push by the open border advocates to provide welfare benefits to six million people.”
Homan continued: “They’re going to give legal assistance to illegal aliens at the taxpayers’ expense to fight the government.”
The number of people ICE was overseeing on its national docket of immigrants who are not US citizens was much lower in recent years.
Official data showed that the figure stood at 4.7 million in 2022 and 3.26 million in both 2020 and 2019.
However, the number does not include those being processed at the border or in facilities awaiting deportation.
Joe Biden
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The current plan to replace Alternative to Detention with the RRM is expected to “require additional funding”.
But less than 200,000 migrants were being tracked by GPS or other technology used in the ATD scheme last year.
The migrant crisis has proved particularly problematic for Biden since he replaced Trump in the White House in January 2021.
The number of encounters on the US-Mexico border topped 2.76 million in 2022, the US Customs & Border Protection agency has revealed.
Washington later confirmed it had lost track of 177,000 migrants after they were released into the US.
