Biden Tries to Cut ICE Detention, Again
$163 million in wasted beds as apprehensions hover near historic records and criminal alien removals drop
By Andrew R. Arthur on April 5, 2023
President Biden has sent his budget for FY 2024 to Capitol Hill, and — just like last year — he is trying to slash ICE detention beds for illegal aliens, even as CBP encounters at the Southwest border hover at historical record levels. Worse, the administration is costing the taxpayers more than $163 million for unused beds, as it refuses to comply with congressional detention mandates and removals of convicted criminal aliens fall.
Fiscal Year 2024 Congressional Justification. Under perverse bureaucratic logic, if you want to find out what happened in federal agencies last year, you must examine those agencies’ budget requests for next year, and in particular their fiscal year “congressional justifications”. You can hide facts from oversight investigators and the media, but you must tell the folks writing the checks what you’ve done with the money.
ICE’s Fiscal Year 2024 Congressional Justification is downright dismal. For example, the agency explains that in FY 2022, it removed just 38,447 removable convicted criminal aliens.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Biden-Tries-Cut-ICE-Detention-Again