Judicial Watch: DHS Quietly Releasing Vanloads of Illegal Aliens Into the United States

While the nation focuses on the 2016 Republican and Democrat presidential campaigns, the Obama administration has been continuing its lawless policies on the Mexican border. Judicial Watch reports that the Department of Homeland Security has been “quietly transporting” illegal aliens from the border to Phoenix and letting them go without processing or issuing court appearance documents. JW’s Border Patrol sources say that this week alone, the government transferred 35 “Other Than Mexican” (OTM) immigrants 116 miles north from Tucson to a Phoenix bus station. From there, they were allowed to go their separate ways.

Judicial Watch was on the ground when one of the white vans carrying a group of OTMs arrived at a Phoenix Greyhound station.

The OTMs are from Honduras, Colombia, El Salvador and Guatemala and Border Patrol officials say this week’s batch was in custody for a couple of days and ordered to call family members in the U.S. so they could purchase a bus ticket for their upcoming trip from Phoenix. Authorities didn’t bother checking the identity of the U.S. relatives or if they’re in the country legally, according to a Border Patrol official directly involved in the matter. American taxpayers pick up the fare for those who claim to have a “credible fear,” Border Patrol sources told JW. None of the OTMs were issued official court appearance documents, but were told to “promise” they’d show up for a hearing when notified, said federal agents with firsthand knowledge of the operation.

A security company contracted by the U.S. government is driving the OTMs from the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector where they were in custody to Phoenix, sources said. The firm is called G4S and claims to be the world’s leading security solutions group with operations in more than 100 countries and 610,000 employees. G4S has more than 50,000 employees in the U.S. and its domestic headquarters is in Jupiter, Florida. Judicial Watch is filing a number of public records requests to get more information involving the arrangement between G4S and the government, specifically the transport of illegal immigrants from the Mexican border to other parts of the country. The photo accompanying this story shows the uniformed G4S guard that transported the OTMs this week from Tucson to Phoenix.

Outraged Border Patrol agents and supervisors on the front lines say illegal immigrants are being released in droves because there’s no room to keep them in detention. “They’re telling us to put them on a bus and let them go,” said one law enforcement official in Arizona. “Just move those bodies across the country.” Officially, DHS denies this is occurring and in fact earlier this year U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske blasted Border Patrol union officials for denouncing this dangerous catch-and-release policy. Kerlikowske’s scolding came in response to the congressional testimony of Bandon Judd, chief of the National Border Patrol Council, the labor union that represents line agents. Judd told lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee that illegal immigrants without serious criminal convictions can be released immediately and disappear into the shadows. Kerlikowske shot back, telling a separate congressional committee: “I would not stand by if the Border Patrol was — releasing people without going through all of the formalities.”

Yet that is what the Obama administration has been doing right under the noses of the Republican-run Congress.

Judd, the Border Patrol Union chief, told senators during a judiciary hearing last month that about 80% of apprehended illegal immigrants are released into the United States. And that isn’t even the worst of it.

In what Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz called “the most infuriating thing” he’s seen in this government yet, Immigration and Customs enforcement has in a three-year period released more than 86,000 criminal illegal aliens into unsuspecting American communities.

“These are people who were here illegally, got caught committing a crime, were convicted of that crime, and then instead of deporting them, they were just released back out into the United States of America,” Chaffetz said during an Oversight hearing on April 28 titled Criminal Aliens Released by the Department of Homeland Security.

Altogether, the criminals aliens had been convicted of more than 231,000 crimes, Chaffetz said. “In 2015, 196 of these people had been convicted of homicide and ICE released them back into the public rather than deporting them.” He continued, “124 of those who were convicted between fiscal year 2010 and 2015, went on to commit homicide.”