Tennessee’s top prosecutor on Wednesday said his office uncovered a scheme by the Biden-Harris administration to release a massive number of illegal migrants into the state, but the plan was ultimately derailed.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attempted to release illegal migrants into Tennessee, but those plans were scrapped following pushback from the governor and other lawmakers, according to documents obtained by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Federal immigration authorities had attempted to transport potentially thousands of single adult migrants from out-of-state detention facilities and release them into Tennessee in coordination with non-profit groups, Skrmetti alleged. (RELATED: Migration Crisis Fueled Rise In Tuberculosis Cases, Study Finds)
“The federal government’s single most important job is to keep dangerous people out of our country and instead it has let killers and rapists illegally cross our border and walk free on our streets,” Skrmetti stated in a press release.
“While the urgent work to fix our broken immigration system continues in Washington, my Office will keep fighting for transparency and accountability,” Skrmetti continued.
RIO GRANDE CITY, TX – DECEMBER 07: A U.S. Border Patrol officer body searches an undocumented immigrant after he illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and was caught on December 7, 2015 near Rio Grande City, Texas. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee learned in December 2022 that federal immigration authorities were coordinating with immigrant-rights organizations and local officials in Nashville to release a massive number of ICE detainees into the state before the end of the Title 42 health order that helped keep border crossings down, according to the press release. When the federal government did not respond to their FOIA request, the attorney general’s office filed suit.
The email correspondence obtained by Skrmetti’s office seemingly reveals a plan to release thousands of single, adult migrant detainees from ICE detention facilities into Tennessee, coordination between local non-profit groups to carry out the plan, and ICE data showing the release of migrant detainees from its Louisiana detention centers carrying violent criminal backgrounds, such as murder, kidnapping and rape.
ICE officials and the Nashville mayor’s office discussed logistics on the plan, such as how many asylum seekers would be brought into the city, how many of them would want the city to be their final destination and what level of support the federal government would be providing, email messages show. Organizations such as the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, Home is Here NOLA and others were mentioned in the email correspondence.
Despite the plan to drop migrants off into Tennessee being derailed due to pushback from the governor and U.S. senators, Skrmetti’s office said thousands of migrants were still released from the Louisiana detention facilities, including dangerous individuals.
“The information further reveals that although ICE abandoned its failed plan for the mass release of detainees into Tennessee, the agency nonetheless released over 7,000 detainees directly from its Louisiana facilities at that time, including more than 30 who were assigned ICE’s highest security-threat level,” the press release states. “Released detainees had criminal records, including homicide, sexual assault, aggravated assault with a weapon, armed robbery, kidnapping, smuggling aliens, drug trafficking, burglary, and fraud.”
The news follows unprecedented levels of illegal immigration into the United States under the Biden-Harris administration.
There were roughly 2.1 million migrant encounters along the U.S. southern border in fiscal year 2024, according to the latest data revealed by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The latest figure puts the total number of migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border during the Biden-Harris administration at roughly 8.5 million — which does not include the roughly half a million non-citizens flown into the country via the White House’s CHNV parole program.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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