A top official at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement admitted in a deposition earlier this month that the Biden administration knew it would slash the agency’s ability to arrest illegal immigrants, but moved ahead anyway.
Corey Price, associate director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division, confirmed that his predecessor had warned the agency that the restrictions the Biden administration was imposing would cut book-ins by half.
The reality would be even worse, because ICE was about to shift most of its work to handling the border surge, rather than going after its own targets in the interior of the country, according to an email detailing the warning.
The warning, which came seven days after President Biden’s inauguration, has proved to be spot-on, Mr. Price confirmed.
Not only has ICE cut its book-ins, but it’s detained far fewer people than it has in recent years, Mr. Price admitted. He said detention is just 40% of what it was in 2019, when the country faced its previous border surge.
Mr. Price’s testimony came as part of a lawsuit Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody has brought against the Biden administration over its illegal immigration policies.
She said Mr. Price’s deposition is “proof that the Biden administration is intentionally underenforcing federal immigration law in a way that has never been seen.”
“At every phase of the process, Biden is purposely failing to enforce the law and detain and remove inadmissible immigrants,” she said.
“Career ICE officials warned the administration that their reckless policies would drastically cut enforcement and still Biden continued to implement them — proving yet again, we only have Biden to blame for the border crisis and the surge in American deaths from Mexican fentanyl.”
She released a video Thursday with excerpts of the testimony.
