The head of Border Patrol stated in an internal investigation that the retraction of Trump-era policy Title 42 would force agents to release illegal entrants to the United States without processing them.
Raul Oritz answered questions under oath as part of an internal hearing about the devastating impact the removal of Title 42 would cause at the border.
The video footage was recorded on July 28 as part of a Florida lawsuit by Attorney General Ashley Moody against the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies.
The emergency memo was titled “Noncitizen releases from U.S. Border Patrol Custody” and Oritz was questioned on “Exhibit 3” which predicted that the scrapping of Title 42 would result in a mass influx of migrants across the border which would completely overwhelm authorities and force border agents to allow a free-flow of illegals into the US.
“It’s a memorandum that I signed on May 19th, 2022, and it discusses the non-citizen releases from our custody,” Oritz told the Florida attorney general as he was asked to describe the article.
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The Florida attorney asked Oritz if he had “ever seen a memorandum like Exhibit 3 before” in his 30 years of working with Border Patrol, to which Oritz proclaimed he had not.
“Would you agree with me that Exhibit 3 deals with the possible rescission of Title 42?” continued the lawyer.
“Yes,” responded Oritz.
Asked: “And if ICE were either unwilling or unable to accept transfer of aliens, this memo authorizes the sectors to release aliens into the interior of the United States?”
“Well, it authorizes them to release them into the communities that they were apprehended in,” Oritz explained.
The lawyer continued: “And does Exhibit 3 authorize the release of aliens that would otherwise be inadmissible into the United States?”
Again, Oritz confirmed that it does.
Title 42 was put in place during Trump’s presidency as a means of protecting the country during the Covid-19 pandemic and gave Border Patrol agents the power to remove illegal immigrants or reject asylum claims if the individual had passed through a country where Covid is endemic.
Last spring, Biden announced that he would suddenly end the policy without putting forward any follow-up plan or strategy to deal with the influx of people heading to the border.
While the Department of Disease Control and Prevention initially claimed that the restrictions Title 42 laid out would be removed in May, the courts are still deliberating the final decision.
Oritz, who has 30 years of border control experience said that Biden’s border policies have “no consequences” for illegal migrants and that the president’s soft touch on illegal immigration is to blame for the border crisis.
This fiscal year, Border Patrol has reported over 2 million encounters with illegal aliens, the highest numbers seen in over 60 years.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas release a statement in April in which he assured us all that illegals would be ‘removed’ after Title 42 is removed:
“Once the Title 42 Order is no longer in place, DHS will process individuals encountered at the border pursuant to Title 8, which is the standard procedure we use to place individuals in removal proceedings. Nonetheless, we know that smugglers will spread misinformation to take advantage of vulnerable migrants. Let me be clear: those unable to establish a legal basis to remain in the United States will be removed.”
It’s a fairly unbelievable promise, considering the fact that illegal immigrants were never removed even when Title 42 was in place!
