The Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a new report detailing how lax immigration enforcement was under the Biden administration. The report found evidence of a shocking number of visa overstays ICE did not pursue, including known national security threats.
From 2021 to 2024, ICE acquired leads on over 3.1 million immigrants who overstayed their visa and were present in the country illegally. Of those 3.1 million, about 100,000 were deemed threats to national security and public safety.
Enforcement against those 100,000 narrowed down to about 21,000 leads which were deemed viable. ICE conducted only 496 investigations, resulting in a total of 8 arrests of foreign nationals. Within the national security threat category, 84 investigations produced only two arrests.
The report also identified the reason for such appalling numbers.
In September of 2021, a policy specifically directed ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) to only investigate “Priority 1 leads,” with Priority 1 designating the highest threat to national security.
Over 3 million visa overstays were designated “non-priority,” leaving those 3 million foreigners to remain in the country undisturbed. It is difficult to overstate how insidious the Biden administration was with this policy.
This was not laziness or corruption on the part of ICE agents. It was a direct order from the highest authorities, using a roundabout method to forbid ICE from enforcing the law. The public already knows that the Biden administration opened up the Southern border and invited hordes of foreigners to invade the United States.
The audit also mentioned that ICE lacked the resources to follow up on every available lead, which is presumably the reason for the September 2021 policy directive. This reveals exactly how open borders politicians can nullify immigration law without a single vote from Congress.
The Biden administration denied or redirected resources away from ICE, then used the shortage as an excuse for setting policy that protected criminals. The resulting fiasco prevented ICE from enforcing federal immigration law in any meaningful way.
The consequences of voting open borders ideologues into power could not be more clear. They will take every possible measure to prioritize ideology over existing law. Visa overstays are illegal aliens just as much as migrant caravans crossing the border. Yet, for four years they got a free pass.
Texans for Strong Borders was created in response to the Biden administration’s migrant invasion. Our national sovereignty and security went undefended, and this OIG report shows how such a monumental failure took place. America must never allow such a catastrophe to occur again.