The White House took to social media this morning to share the news that there have been ‘no illegal aliens’ released in the last 10 months.
Is this true, though? Let’s look at 2 examples to find out.
Yesterday, Dylan Contreras was released from detention after 10 months. Immigration officials arrested him at an immigration hearing in New York last May, accusing him of being in the country illegally. The exact circumstances of his release are unclear, but the Governor of NY advocated for his release to President Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan earlier in the month. His asylum claim is currently still pending.
In January, a detention facility in Texas held hundreds of children and parents after the surge in arrests around the United States. Now, that same facility holds 53 children and 49 parents in detention. Many have been released back into the United States. Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times article:
Earlier this year, after a surge of arrests in Minnesota and elsewhere, hundreds of children were being held with their parents at a federal detention center in Dilley, Texas, where families described poor medical care, inadequate food and water and little education for children.
Now, that number has dwindled. While some families were deported, others have been released back into the country. As of this week, 53 children and 49 parents were being held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the federal government’s only detention center for families, according to internal government figures reviewed by The New York Times.
There were about 500 children and 450 parents at the facility in mid-January, according to RAICES, a nonprofit that provides legal services to families inside Dilley.
The White House could reason that those people weren’t actually ‘illegal aliens’, hence why they were released. If so, the question becomes why is the United States detaining individuals for extended periods of time without due process or proper verification?
While other examples exist, these two recent examples should provide more context to the social media post made by the White House.
