White House Didn't OK Release Of More Than 2,000 Immigrants, Report Claims

MESA, AZ - FEBRUARY 28: Honduran immigration detainees prepare to board their U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), deportation flight bound for San Pedro Sula, Honduras on February 28, 2013 in Mesa, Arizona. ICE operates 4-5 flights per week from Mesa to Central America, deporting hundreds of undocumented immigrants detained in western states of the U.S. With the possibility of federal budget sequestration, ICE released 303 immigration detainees in the last week from detention centers throughout Arizona. More than 2,000 immigration detainees remain in ICE custody in the state. Most detainees typically remain in custody for several weeks before they are deported to their home country, while others remain for longer periods while their immigration cases work through the courts. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images) (2013 Getty Images)

Government officials decided to release more than 2,000 immigrants facing deportation in 2013 strictly for budget reasons and didn't tell the Homeland Security secretary about the plan, according to an oversight report.

The lack of communication led the Obama administration to wrongly deny for weeks that 2,228 immigrants facing deportation had been released, according to a harshly critical, 41-page report Tuesday from the Homeland Security Department's inspector general.

The report also said officials at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn't adequately plan for the increase in immigrant arrests at the Mexican border and didn't track available funds or spending accurately.

The Homeland Security Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment by phone and email from The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Citing internal budget documents, the AP reported on March 1, 2013, that the administration had released more than 2,000 immigrants in the preceding two weeks and planned to release 3,000 more amid the looming budget cuts. The White House and Homeland Security Department disputed AP's reporting until March 14, when the then-director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, John Morton, acknowledged to Congress during a hearing that the agency actually had released 2,228 people from immigration jails, starting Feb. 9, 2013, for what he described as "solely budgetary reasons."

At the time, Morton told lawmakers that the decision to release the immigrants was not discussed in advance with political appointees, including those in the White House and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. He said the pending automatic cuts known as sequestration were "driving in the background."

The inspector general, John Roth, confirmed Morton's explanation, concluding that senior ICE officials didn't inform Napolitano or the White House about the implications of the agency's budget shortfall and did not notify Napolitano about their plans to release the immigrants.

Napolitano said days after the AP published its story that the report was "not really accurate" and that it had developed "its own mythology."

"Several hundred are related to sequester, but it wasn't thousands," Napolitano said at the time.

It was not immediately clear why Napolitano did not correct her statements about the accuracy of AP's reporting between March 1 and two weeks later, when Morton acknowledged the releases.

Republican Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and John McCain of Arizona asked the inspector general to investigate the agency's decision to release the immigrants. Roth said that because the releases had occurred the weekend before new budget restrictions were put in place, they generated speculation that the releases were improperly motivated.

The 2013 releases drew sharp criticism from Republican lawmakers, who have said the Obama administration hasn't done enough to address border security and wasn't properly enforcing immigration law.

Data published by the government in May of this year revealed that the Homeland Security Department released 36,007 convicted criminal immigrants in 2013 who are facing deportation, including those accounting for 193 homicide and 426 sexual assault convictions. The immigrants nearly all still face deportation and are required to check in with immigration authorities while their deportation cases are pending.

In his report, Roth concluded that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials didn't anticipate the consequences of the 2013 budget-related releases and were unprepared to answer questions from Congress or the media.

Despite the missteps, Roth's report concluded that ICE officials in charge of actually releasing the immigrants "made reasonable decisions given the short timeframe."

Officials with ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations, which is in charge of jailing immigrants facing deportation, repeatedly asked ICE Chief Financial Officer Radha Sekar for budget information in the months leading up to the mass releases but never got it. The result was that Enforcement and Removal Operations officials started deporting more immigrants to reduce its daily jail population, which led to more spending for charter flights, tickets on commercial flights for immigrants being deported and overtime costs for ICE officers to escort people back to their home countries.

The inspector general said ICE has yet to improve the communication or budget transparency problems that led to the releases, and he made four recommendations to avoid future problems, including creating a plan to give ICE's removal operations "reliable and transparent funding sources" to manage immigration jail bed space.

In a written response, Sekar said ICE agreed with the recommendations.