
By John Binder. Media: Breitbart
President Donald Trump’s United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has initiated deportation proceedings of tens of thousands of illegal aliens who had been left in legal limbo by former President Joe Biden’s administration, Breitbart News has exclusively learned.
Notices to Appear (NTAs) are charging documents that instruct an illegal alien to appear before a federal immigration judge in deportation proceedings.
USCIS Director Joseph Edlow, in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, said that under the Biden administration, the agency “had no policy” on NTAs and thus “when a case was denied and the person was just in limbo and had no other legal pathway here, nothing was happening.”
Under Trump, Edlow said, that has all changed.
“Now, those people … when they are denied [benefits], they are given a Notice to Appear and sent to immigration court,” Edlow said.
According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), immigration benefits include “granting of U.S. citizenship to those who are eligible to naturalize, authorizing individuals to reside in the U.S. on a permanent basis, and providing noncitizens with the eligibility to work in the United States.”
Since Trump took office, about 86,500 NTAs have been issued to illegal aliens who failed to secure immigration benefits and were thus placed in deportation proceedings.
One USCIS official told Breitbart News that the administration has been ramping up the issuance of NTAs in recent months. Indeed, figures published in June showed that at the time, about 26,700 NTAs had been issued since Trump took office.
Those figures indicate that nearly 60,000 of the 86,500 NTAs issued under Trump’s USCIS have been issued in the last few months.
Edlow told Breitbart News that USCIS must have a rigorous NTA policy so that hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are not living in the U.S. in some sort of legal limbo, but rather have their cases closed before an immigration judge.
“… [T]here should be an end to those cases. That end is either them getting relief before an immigration judge or their ultimate removal from this country,” Edlow said.
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