Jordan said on Facebook and
Twitter On Saturday, Biden issued a new order to release “all” undocumented immigrants. Similarly, Jordan said in a Monday interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that Biden “decided he was going to release 14,000 illegals.” Fourteen thousand is the estimated number of people in immigration and customs enforcement across the country.
The email contains the words “release everyone immediately.” But Breitbart and then Jordan ripped the words out of context.
We do not have the full story on what happened to these Texas releases or to the email exchange. But it is already clear that there is no basis for the allegation that Biden ordered a mass release of every person in ICE facilities across the US.
ICE said in a statement that it “continues to make case from case to case determination.” An ICE official who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity explicitly confirmed that there is no Biden order to release everyone.
A Jordanian spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It’s noteworthy that Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson contradicted Jordan’s claim three days before Jordan made his false claim on Bartiromo’s show. Carlson, who received the Houston email before it was released in court, told his audience that the Biden administration’s own policy note did not call for the immediate release of anyone in ICE custody.
The email chain
Here is a more detailed breakdown of the ICE email exchange.
Thursday’s email, which sparked the controversy, was written by an ‘assistant officer in charge’ of the enforcement and removal operations at ICE’s Houston field office. The email says they must stop removing immigrants from the country by midnight – Biden’s government has ordered a 100-day liberation exemption to take effect no later than Friday – and then goes on to say: ‘Go the HRD at 1300 hours after for new review decisions. Let everyone go immediately. ‘
Unlike the Breitbart article, this does not mean that all undocumented immigrants across the country or even in any Houston institution should be released immediately. According to another internal email issued by the Justice Department in court, ‘HRD means high-risk prisoners’ – specifically high-risk prisoners for Covid-19.
This Friday email, written by an ICE assistant director whose name was also redirected, explained that the high-risk inmates are ‘Fraihat cases’. Faour Abdallah Fraihat is the chief prosecutor in the case that led a judge last year to order ICE to identify, monitor and consider the release of prisoners with an increased risk of serious coronavirus damage.
The Friday email said ICE had detained some high-risk people because ‘their removal was imminent’. However, after Biden’s freeze prevented these looming deportations, ICE had to decide to keep the people in custody or let them go within the US. (Releasing people from detention does not mean that they will never be deported.)
The Biden administration has not publicly explained how it wants the release of the deportation to interact with the provisions of the pandemic-related court order. An internal ICE email sent Friday afternoon told Thursday’s sender: “Leave them all free, immediately” by email to “withdraw this order immediately.” In this withdrawal email, signed “FOD” (probable director of the field office), it is said that supervisors should follow the freezing memo of the Biden administration “as close to the letter as possible” – the memo says nothing about the immediate release of high-risk immigrants from Covid not -19 – and that “operational guidance will be developed and issued in the coming days.”
Four days later, this Tuesday, a federal judge put the deportation freeze on temporary hold.
