EXCLUSIVE: ‘Unacceptable’: Texas GOP Rep Demands Mayorkas Answer To Data ‘Miscalculations’ After DCNF Reports
Jennie Taer on December 19, 2022
Republican Texas Rep. Pat Fallon is demanding that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas answer to how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) miscalculated data on illegal immigrants released into the country after the Daily Caller News Foundation exposed the issue, according to a Monday letter first obtained by the DCNF.
“ICE’s mission statement reads as follows: ‘Protect America through criminal investigations and enforcing immigration laws to preserve national security and public safety,’” Fallon told the DCNF. “Instead of living up to this, ICE appears more interested in squashing transparency and empowering radical anti-ICE activists. Sadly, this is yet another chapter in the story of Secretary Mayorkas’ incompetent, negligent, and reckless leadership of DHS. The American people deserve answers. We will find them come hell or high water.”
ICE was underreporting the number of illegal immigrants released into the country with no form of electronic tracking by more than 18,000% and was misreporting the number of illegal immigrants released into the country with ankle monitors by nearly 600%, the DCNF recently reported. The revelations were a result of discrepancies in data between what ICE was telling attendees of a closed-door Dec. 1 event to discuss the “Alternatives to Detention” program, which the agency uses to electronically monitor those released into the country, and what it was disclosing publicly on its website.
“As a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, I demand a full review of your ATD program and what led to the posting of erroneous data, as well as your association with radical anti-ICE activists. I will be watching closely and will continue to hold you accountable for these missteps in the 118th Congress,” Fallon wrote in his letter to Mayorkas.
ICE later apologized and fixed the data issue, telling the DCNF at the time “it became clear there was a data miscalculation.” Fallon, however, finds it hard to believe it was a mere “miscalculation.”
“How could this be a ‘miscalculation of data’ when ICE was announcing the correct figures at a private symposium? What was explained away as a ‘miscalculation of data’ appears more like suppression of data. This comes at a time when our southern border is in a state of emergency,” Fallon wrote.
Fallon also raised the issue of Peter Markowitz, a law professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University and director of the school’s Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic, who in 2019 wrote a “blueprint” for abolishing the agency, participating in the Dec. 1 event, a detail the DCNF revealed while reporting on the data issue.
“Your reckless policies have not only facilitated the border crisis but have outright encouraged it. Equally troubling is that the symposium where the correct numbers were distributed featured Peter Markowitz, who in 2019 wrote a blueprint for scrapping ICE. This data suppression and courting of radical ‘abolish ICE’ activists is sadly characteristic of your dismal leadership as DHS Secretary. When questioned about this, journalists are met with hostility or obfuscation,” Fallon wrote.
“This is unacceptable. The American people deserve transparency,” Fallon wrote.
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