DHS Keeps Detention Space Unfilled as Over Half a Million Criminal Migrants Live Throughout U.S. Melina Mara/The Washington Post/John Moore/Getty Images

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has kept detention space, meant for migrants considered a priority for deportation, unfilled as more than half a million known criminal migrants live throughout the United States.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data, divulged to Congress last week, reveals that the agency’s non-detained docket includes over 425,000 convicted criminal migrants and more than 222,000 migrants with pending criminal charges.

By the end of the year, more than eight million migrants will be on ICE’s non-detained docket. Those on the non-detained docket are known to ICE but live in American towns and cities while awaiting their deportation hearings.

For perspective, when former President Donald Trump left office in early 2021, only about 3.2 million migrants were on ICE’s non-detained docket, indicating that Biden and Harris have almost tripled the docket’s population.

Meanwhile, Biden and Harris’s DHS has kept ICE detention beds unfilled.

Congress currently funds 41,500 detention beds, but the latest federal data shows DHS is only utilizing 37,395 detention beds, leaving more than 4,100 beds open and available but unused.

A recent report from the House Homeland Security Committee detailed that while Biden and Harris have sought to cut detention bed space, more than 85 percent of migrants arriving at the southern border are ultimately being released into the U.S. interior.

Only a fraction are monitored by DHS through the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program.

In April, Acting ICE Director Patrick Lechleitner urged Congress to fund at least 50,000 detention beds. Other experts have suggested that the federal government needs hundreds of thousands of detention beds to keep up with record illegal immigration and ensure that migrants are not released into the U.S. interior.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow him on Twitter here.

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