EL PASO – U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) released the following statement after the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) published the information he requested on the Biden Administration’s “Notice to Report” process at the Southern border, which showed that the asylum process is extremely backlogged and one out of every four migrants given a Notice to Report disappears into the U.S.:

“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,” said Sen. Cornyn. “Instead of propping up ineffective programs that exacerbate the problem, the Biden Administration should work with Congress to actually fix this issue and relieve the immense burden this crisis has placed on border communities.”

Background:

Sens. Cornyn and James Lankford (R-OK) sent a letter in August of 2021 to U.S. Comptroller General Gene L. Dodaro asking that the GAO examine the Department of Homeland Security’s “notice to report to ICE (U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement)” process. This report, which can be found here, is a result of that request and shows:

• U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) did not coordinate with or provide advance notice to ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations prior to implementing its Notice to Report (NTR) process. As a result of the lack of advance coordination, ICE offices were sometimes flooded with migrants whom ICE did not have the capacity to process. One ICE field office reported that on certain days between 300 and 500 migrants would appear outside their office asking to be processed.
• Nearly one out of four migrants processed with Notice to Report and Parole did not actually report. Twenty-two to 25 percent of migrants apprehended as part of a family unit and issued a NTR have not reported to ICE. Seventy-eight percent of such migrants who received a NTR reported, but only 75 percent with Parole/ATD reported. However, migrants who reported to ICE offices that did not have the capacity to fully process them were simply recorded as meeting the terms of their parole, and were rescheduled for a future appointment date, meaning that immigration court proceedings may not have formally begun for all of those migrants who did report.
• CBP did not validate addresses for migrants who were processed with NTRs and faced issues with address validation for Parole/ATD as well. CBP’s systems could not distinguish between a home address and a commercial address, which means that CBP had no way to determine whether the migrant would be residing at the address given.

In March 2021, the Border Patrol initiated its Notice to Report (NTR) process for border crossers, and in July 2021, they began a “humanitarian parole” process known as “Parole plus ATD.” From July 2021 through Feb. 2022, the Border Patrol released about 91,000 family unit members under parole plus ATD. During the lifespan of the