’Fast Track’ Deportations Are Going Nowhere

The U.S. has restarted “fast-track” deportation flights of Central American migrants denied asylum in this country. But as long as the Biden administration continues to admit massive waves of illegal aliens, and the vast majority never surface at immigration court hearings, the exercise is like spooning water out of a badly leaking bucket.

While the Department of Homeland Security says it is taking a tough stand to discourage illegal entry, the agency provided no estimates on how many migrants might be returned to their homelands (at U.S. taxpayer expense, of course).

What we do know is that deportations by immigration courts remain at historic lows. With just two months remaining in Fiscal Year 2021, court-ordered removals numbered a modest 30,637. That’s a far cry from 89,896 in 2016, the previous low. Barely 40 percent of cases resulted in removal, compared with 70 percent in 2020 and 72 percent the year before.

And those statistics only account for asylum seekers who appeared before a judge. Axios News revealed last month that some 50,000 illegal border crossers were released in the U.S. without any court dates. Though they were told to report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office within 60 days, only 13 percent did so.

“None of this should come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the Biden administration’s implementation of its anti-enforcement crusade,” says Andrew Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Indeed, the president’s leaky bucket has more gaping holes.

The 50,000 released migrants referenced by Axios does not include the thousands more “inadmissible” aliens who are being admitted through catch-and-release policies every month. Those do not include the estimated 300,000 migrant “gotaways” who have sneaked across the border so far this fiscal year. Chances that these lawless evaders will be deported are somewhere between slim and none.

Even as this administration touts its new “fast track” deportations, the White House is considering plans to bring other deportees back to America. One featured proposal would grant amnesty and reparations to more than 1,000 illegal aliens removed by the Trump administration. How’s that for taking a tough stand?