Washington, D.C. (April 18, 2023) – A new analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies reveals that the number of illegal migrants released into the United States by the Biden administration’s catch-and-release policies has now passed the 2 million mark.

The milestone of 2 million illegal-immigrant releases is calculated from publicly available data and is a conservative figure. A complete accounting of the number of releases would include certain data which the administration has hidden from the public, such as the number of migrants released by CBP’s Office of Field Operations after June 30, 2022, or aliens transferred by CBP at the Southwest border to ICE and released after that date.

An additional 1.4 million aliens have illegally entered the country after having been detected, but not apprehended, by the Border Patrol, so-called “got-aways”.

These policies have not only allowed these illegal migrants to enter the United States, but have also encouraged an untold number of additional migrants to make the dangerous journey to the Southwest border.

Andrew Arthur, the Center’s resident fellow in law and policy and author of the posting, notes that “the United States is now in unchartered waters, allowing entry to more illegal aliens than legal immigrants; in all of FY 2021 and FY2022, DHS gave out only about 1.76 million new green cards to lawful immigrants.”

Arthur continued, “As Barbara Jordan, civil rights icon and former chairwoman of President Clinton’s bipartisan U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, said in 1994, ‘If we cannot control illegal immigration, we cannot sustain our national interest in legal immigration. Those who come here illegally, and those who hire them, will destroy the credibility of our immigration policies and their implementation. In the course of that, I fear, they will destroy our commitment to immigration itself.’ That’s exactly what’s happening in the United States today.”

President Biden’s refusal to disclose total figures on migrant releases at the Southwest border makes it difficult to get a full accounting of the number of illegal migrants who have been released into the United States. Most of the publicly available information on Biden administration’s migrant releases comes from a court order in Texas v. Biden, a case filed by the states of Texas and Missouri in April 2021 to force DHS to re-implement the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP better known as Remain in Mexico).

The judge in that case required DHS to file monthly reports with the court disclosing the total number of migrants released by DHS at the Southwest border. After that order was lifted, the Biden administration refused to voluntarily disclose information on the hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants released by OFO and ICE, although Border Patrol does publish monthly statistics on its Southwest border releases.