The Biden administration has been secretly flying illegal aliens who were previously deported by the Trump administration back into the U.S., according to a new report.
Internal memos obtained by the Washington Free Beaconpoint to the existence of a top-secret program that has been bringing people from Cameroon, whose asylum claims were denied in the past and were deported, back into America. The claims were backed up by interviews they carried out with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) staff.
The publication reports that the program is a response to a report by Human Rights Watch in February 2022 about Cameroonian citizens who were deported in the years from 2019 to 2021 and were subsequently mistreated by their government. They estimate that as many as 90 Cameroonians were deported in this time frame, and many of them have been coming back into the U.S. at the behest of the Biden administration despite their asylum claims being determined invalid in the past. According to the report, those who were returned to the Central African nation were subject to arrest, torture, extortion, rape, abuses against relatives, medical neglect and other violence.
Jon Feere, a former ICE official and Center for Immigration Studies Director of Investigations, told the Free Beacon: "Gutting deportations isn't enough for the Biden administration, so now they're apparently bringing back previously deported illegal aliens. These are people who have already had their cases closed, one way or another, and they've been returned home."
ICE officials worked together with nonprofit organizations to help relocate the Cameroonians who were secretly flown back to the U.S., and a trail of emails describe some of their movements. Officials with the ICE who are familiar with the program said that various airports throughout the U.S. were being used as ports of entry for these individuals from Cameroon to make the influx less obvious by dispersing them across the country.
The internal memos revealed that the reason the migrants were returned was to avoid a “potential lawsuit” related to their alleged abuse, although their return has not been ordered by any courts.
Former ICE Chief of Staff Tom Blank complained about the power that the Biden administration appears to be giving activist groups. He said: “These individuals were deported by the order of a court after they were afforded all due process rights. For DHS to arbitrarily reverse court orders to satisfy complaints from an activist group makes a joke out of the entire legal immigration process. It looks like outside activist groups now run the DHS immigration process instead of the courts.”
Program could serve as a model for future efforts to bring migrants back to U.S.
Although around 90 Cameroonian migrants might sound like a drop in the bucket when you consider the millions of illegal immigrants who have made their way across the border with Mexico, many ICE officials worry that the program could serve as a model for similar programs in the future. If other activist groups threaten to file lawsuits about the mistreatment of migrants like Human Rights Watch did, there is now precedent and the Biden administration could once again choose to return the asylum seekers to avoid controversy and litigation.
ICE staff are growing increasingly frustrated with Biden’s immigration policies, and deportations have dropped dramatically since he took office; less than 5% of the 3.2 million migrants who were encountered by the border were deported in 2023 thanks to changes to guidelines that make deportations more difficult.
This is far from the only time that Biden has taken steps to undo Trump's initiatives on immigration. On his first day in office, he famously rolled back several of Trump's border policies and paused the construction of the wall at the southern border. He also put an end to a policy that required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico until their court hearing, something that has contributed to the growing problem of illegal crossings at the border.
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