(The Center Square) – Border Patrol officials say foreign nationals who illegally cross the border aren’t being vetted prior to being released into the country.
At a press conference in Houston Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas’ plan to target and arrest members of a violent Venezuelan prison gang, Tren De Aragua, who illegally entered the country. “I will not allow them to use Texas as a base of operations to terrorize our citizens,” he said.
Joining Abbott was National Border Patrol Council Vice President Chris Cabrera, who said, “As a federal agent, we have no way of vetting these people other than the honor system. If they tell us they're from so and so and this is their name and we can't check against Venezuela's database, that they're not going to give us access to it, so we have to let them go,” he said, referring to releasing them into the U.S. “Unfortunately, we do let them go.”
When it comes to processing people for removal, he said, “In the off chance, we're going to deport them, Venezuela won’t take them back.” Instead of requiring them to, as was the case in the Trump administration, he said, “Our government on the federal level is kind of weak-minded. We just go ahead and say, ‘OK, well, you know, go ahead and stay here.’”
The level of violence Americans are experiencing at the hands of criminal Venezuelans is “an infestation,” he said. “It's taking hold not just in Colorado or New York, but in Michigan, Florida, Texas, you name it.
“What people fail to realize is working on the border, we see everything come through, but it doesn't affect us as much as it affects the rest of the United States, especially Houston. Everything that comes through our area just passes through and it ends up as your problem or a problem somewhere up north. If people don't wake up and see it for what it is, we're going to be in a lot of trouble in this country.”
The National Border Patrol Council has endorsed former President Donald Trump. Its union leaders credit Trump with improving border security and the current administration for obliterating it. Cabrera has testified before Congress about the toll of Biden-Harris policies on agents, including 17 who committed suicide in one year.
Retired Border Patrol supervisory agent and now Texas Border Czar Mike Banks said, “The TDA problem in Texas and the rest of the United States is a direct result of open border policies. The Biden Harris administration has sent out an ‘all call’ to the world that you can cross this border without any consequences.”
“It is a known fact that the Venezuelan government has released prisoners” with the condition that they don’t come back. “When they show up here, there's no surprise that we have a criminal illegal gang problem in the United States,” he said.
The Biden administration maintains all illegal border crossers are being vetted. “That is an absolute lie,” Banks said, “because they cannot vet them against their criminal history in Venezuela because Venezuela refuses to share that information with us.”
No criminal database exists to capture TDA gang member data and arrests. Texas Department of Public Safety is creating one, Abbott said.
Texas Public Policy Foundation fellow and former Border Patrol agent Ammon Blair told The Center Square that because of the volume of illegal border crossers, there isn’t enough time for an individual agent to properly vet anyone.
Not all agents are trained to identify false identification and some just “want to get them out of the field as fast as possible,” he said. “That's priority number one is getting them into the intake system, putting them on the bus and moving them out.
“There really is no vetting. The only vetting is asking them, ‘What country are you from? What is your name? How old are you? Are you a family member?’”
If they have a criminal history, it may pop up if it’s connected to their ID, or fake ID, he said. But many have no ID so they have to take them at their word for who they say they are. “They just tell us, and we have to accept that as truth,” he said.
Agents also no longer ask if they are seeking asylum or making a claim of credible fear, he said. After a foreign national illegally crosses the border, agents “immediately just get their biographical information however best we can.” They input their information and scan passports if they have them, he said. For those with no IDs, they input biometric data, including fingerprints. “That's the only vetting we do.”
Under the Trump administration, he said, “we heavily scrutinized. The process was completely different. We adhered more towards the immigration law than we do now.”
Since fiscal 2021 through July, illegal border crossers from Venezuela total nearly 856,000, the greatest number in U.S. history, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.
Another 115,000 Venezuelans were granted parole through a program that’s been directly linked to perpetrators committing violent crimes against Americans, including TDA gang members, who are being arrested nationwide, The Center Square reported .
In Texas, law enforcement officials have arrested more than 3,000 Venezuelan illegal border crossers; more than 200 are wanted, Abbott said.
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