(FiveNation.com)- Last month, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) admitted to having “no records” on over 370,000 illegal immigrants released into the country with electronic tracking devices.
In a December 22 letter to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), ICE said it had no records for 377,980 individuals monitored by the agency’s “Alternatives to Detention” (ADT) program which electronically tracks illegals released into the country.
TRAC had sought data on those in ATD custody from the beginning of FY2019 until August 2022 through a Freedom of Information Act request.
In a statement to the Daily Caller, TRAC assistant professor Austin Kocher said ICE’s revelation “came as a shock,” especially after the agency informed TRAC that it had been “misleading the public for several months by releasing extremely inaccurate ATD data.”
ICE began the ADT program in 2004 to monitor those illegals released into the United States through ankle monitors, GPS tracking, and cell phones.
Previously, ICE provided TRAC with data on individuals enrolled in ATD, disclosing the technology used, along with the dates of entry into ATD and other crucial details.
Last month, the Daily Caller reported that ICE had privately disclosed different data to participants at a private event that revealed an over 18,000 percent difference from what ICE publicly disclosed on those illegals not tracked with any technology. In a separate report, the Daily Caller revealed a 600 percent difference between privately and publicly disclosed GPS tracking data.
ICE subsequently updated the data and apologized for the discrepancy.
After ICE incorrectly released data from May 2021 instead of September 2022, TRAC wrote that ICE is mandated by Congress to publish data on immigrant detentions, and it should be clear to the agency that it is expected that the data published should be accurate, “not inconsistent, error-ridden, and misleading.”
TRAC said at the time that ICE’s “sloppy, uncorrected errors” are “more of the norm rather than the exception.”
