ICE has “knowingly released murderers and rapists” onto America’s streets, according to Tennessee’s top attorney

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers under the Biden-Harris administration have “knowingly released murderers and rapists from migrant detention facilities on America’s streets,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said as he released data he obtained through a lawsuit had been obtained.

“Our office will continue to fight to hold the federal government accountable for its catastrophic continued failure to enforce immigration laws,” he said in the newspaper. post on social media.

Skrmetti’s office obtained the data after Gov. Bill Lee first learned in December 2022 that ICE had contacted Nashville officials in an effort to coordinate the release of large numbers of foreign nationals in the city ahead of the federal public health authority’s Title 42 in May ended. 2023. The city and state requested information from ICE on including how many people were being sent, where from and what resources were being provided to help. They also submitted questions through Freedom of Information Act requests, but did not receive the requested information and later filed a lawsuit to obtain it, Skrmetti said.

Multiple states indicted about the end of Title 42, including Tennessee. Florida and Texas have separately filed a lawsuit seeking to block a plan by the Biden-Harris administration to release illegal border crossers en masse into the U.S. instead of detaining them and processing them for removal under federal law. law, The Center Square reported. The courts ruled in favor of the states, although Title 42 ended when the COVID-19 era national emergency ended.

“The records show that ICE’s plan to release migrants in this state was derailed by opposition from the Tennessee Governor and U.S. Senators and ultimately halted by successful lawsuits by the Tennessee Attorney General’s office and other states ,” said Skrmetti. said in a statement last week. “The information further shows that although ICE abandoned its failed plan for the mass release of detainees in Tennessee, the agency nevertheless released more than 7,000 detainees directly from Louisiana facilities at that time, including more than 30 to whom ICEs highest security threat level was assigned. .”

The 384 pages of documents reveal that ICE’s New Orleans field office coordinated extensively with city officials and nonprofit and religious organizations in the region to transport, house and assist illegal border crossers in preparation for a mass release as Title 42 came to an end.

The documents also detail where thousands of unaccompanied adult aliens were being held in facilities in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Among them, about 7,000 had criminal records including murder, assault, aggravated assault with a weapon, armed robbery, kidnapping, alien smuggling, drug trafficking, burglary and fraud, according to the documents.

They are citizens of many countries including Afghanistan, Angola, Armenia, Bangladesh, Belize, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, China, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guatemala, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Peru, Romania, Russia, Somalia, Syria, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Venezuela.

The US State Department has done that assigned Cuba and Syria as state sponsors of terrorism; China and Russia are among 20 countries identified as countries of particular interest. Under current law, citizens of these countries rarely qualify for asylum.

The document shows that those with criminal records have been released on parole, taken into custody, released on their own recognizance or released on a supervision order. Few applied for asylum, the documents show.

The documents were released nearly two years after ICE-New Orleans contacted Tennessee officials and after ICE recently reported that hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens released into the U.S. have criminal records.

The report states that more than 662,000 criminal aliens have been identified for deportation, two-thirds of whom are convicted criminals, The Center Square reported. Among the worst are those convicted or charged with murder (14,914), sexual assault (20,061), sexual assault (105,146), kidnapping (3,372) and commercialized sex crimes, including sex trafficking (3,971).

In a separate database, ICE reported that it arrested more than 387,000 criminal noncitizens, including violent offenders, between fiscal years 2021 and 2023. first reported.

“The federal government’s most important job is to keep dangerous people out of our country, and instead it has allowed murderers and rapists to illegally cross our border and walk freely through our streets,” Skrmetti said. “As the urgent work to fix our broken immigration system continues in Washington, my office will continue to fight for transparency and accountability.”