New government report shows 1 out of every 4 noncitizen families did not report to immigration officials

EL PASO, Texas -- A new report from the United States Government Accountability Office shows that one out of every four noncitizen families did not report to immigration officials to receive their charging document.

The GAO investigated new processing techniques that were implemented by Border Patrol in March of 2020, as the southwest border saw a 300 percent increase in the number of noncitizen apprehensions between the ports of entry.

Typically, when a noncitizen family or individual is apprehended, they are processed by a Border Patrol agent and given a Notice to Appear, which is a charging document and places them into immigration court removal proceedings.

As agents dealt with an influx of migrants in 2021, Border Patrol decided to implement a new process designed to reduce the amount of time agents have to process migrants. Border Patrol started releasing family units with a Notice to Report. In this process, agents interview families and obtain basic information, including an address they will be going to, and then give the family a NTR, which tells them they have to report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office within 60 days. It is at the field office where the family is given their Notice to Appear, which starts their removal process.

Border Patrol also started a second, similar process, known as a parole ATD, or alternative to detention.

These new techniques created challenges, the report shows.

Between March 2021 and February 2022, Border Patrol released about 185,000 families under the NTR and ATD process, but only about 140,000 families reported to the field office in the 60-day period.

ICE is in the process of locating the roughly 40,000 families that did not appear at the field office. The agency is having problems locating the families because some of the forwarding addresses were incomplete. The report shows that between March and June of 2021, only about 40% of the addresses for families were completely filled out by Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley sector. For example, some addresses only had a city, and no physical street address.

Texas Senator John Cornyn requested the investigation in 2021.

“This report lays bare what we already knew: the Biden Administration’s practice of issuing so-called Notices to Report or otherwise paroling migrants into the U.S. on the promise they will eventually report to ICE is an abject failure, with one in four migrants disappearing into the interior, unlikely to be located again,” Sen. Cornyn said in a statement once the report was released.