Tennessee’s top lawman says ICE 'knowingly released murderers and rapists' onto U.S. streets

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials under the Biden-Harris administration “knowingly released murderers and rapists from its migrant detention facilities onto American streets,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said when releasing data he obtained through a lawsuit.

“Our office will keep fighting to hold the federal government accountable for its catastrophic ongoing failure to enforce immigration laws,” he said in the social media post.

Skrmetti's office obtained the records after Gov. Bill Lee first learned in December 2022 that ICE had reached out to Nashville officials in an effort to coordinate the release of large numbers of foreign nationals into the city before the federal public health authority Title 42 ended in May 2023. The city and state requested information from ICE about how many were being sent, from where, what resources were being provided to assist, among other questions. They also submitted questions through Freedom of Information Act requests, didn’t receive the information they requested and later sued to obtain it, Skrmetti said.

Multiple states sued over Title 42 ending, including Tennessee. Florida and Texas separately sued to stop a Biden-Harris administration plan to release illegal borders crossers en masse into the U.S. instead of detaining and processing them for removal in accordance with federal law, The Center Square reported. The courts ruled in favor of the states, although Title 42 ended when the COVID-19-era national emergency ended.

“The records show that ICE’s plan to release migrants into this State was derailed by pushback from Tennessee’s Governor and U.S. Senators and ultimately stopped through successful litigation by the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office and other States,” Skrmetti said in a statement last week. “The information further reveals that although ICE abandoned its failed plan for the mass release of detainees into Tennessee, the agency nonetheless released over 7,000 detainees directly from its Louisiana facilities at that time, including more than 30 who were assigned ICE’s highest security-threat level.”

The 384 pages of documents reveal that the ICE New Orleans field office was coordinating extensively with city officials and nonprofit and religious organizations in its region to transport, house and assist illegal border crossers, preparing for a mass release as Title 42 came to a close.

The documents also list where thousands of single, adult foreign nationals were held in facilities in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Among them were roughly 7,000 with criminal records, including homicide, sexual assault, aggravated assault with a weapon, armed robbery, kidnapping, smuggling aliens, drug trafficking, burglary, and fraud, according to the documents.

They are citizens of many countries, including Afghanistan, Angola, Armenia, Bangladesh, Belize, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, China, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guatemala, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Peru, Romania, Russia, Somalia, Syria, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Venezuela.

The U.S. State Department has designated Cuba and Syria as State Sponsors of Terrorism; China and Russia are among 20 countries designated as Countries of Particular Concern. Under current law, citizens of these countries rarely qualify for asylum.

The document shows that those with criminal records were paroled, bonded out, released on their own recognizance or released with an order of supervision. Few claimed asylum, according to the documents.

The documents were released nearly two years after ICE-New Orleans reached out to Tennessee officials and after ICE recently reported that hundreds of thousands of illegal foreign nationals released into the U.S. have criminal records.

The report states that more than 662,000 criminal foreign nationals were identified to be deported, two-thirds of whom are convicted criminals, The Center Square reported. Among the worst are those convicted of, or charged with, homicide (14,914), sexual assault (20,061), assault (105,146), kidnapping (3,372), and commercialized sexual offenses, including sex trafficking (3,971).

In a separate database, ICE reported it had arrested more than 387,000 criminal noncitizens between fiscal 2021 and 2023, including violent offenders, The Center Square first reported.

“The federal government’s single most important job is to keep dangerous people out of our country and instead it has let killers and rapists illegally cross our border and walk free on our streets,” Skrmetti said. “While the urgent work to fix our broken immigration system continues in Washington, my Office will keep fighting for transparency and accountability.”