Republican members of Congress are sounding the alarm over an internal report from the Department of Homeland Security that calls on border patrol agents to look for violent criminals from Venezuela who were just released from prisons and are reportedly making their way to the United States.
In a letter signed by multiple Republican lawmakers, it said, “We write you with serious concern about a recent U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) intelligence report received by Border Patrol that instructs agents to look for violent criminals from Venezuela among the migrant caravans heading towards the U.S.-Mexico border. It has been widely reported that the murderous narco-terrorist Maduro regime in Venezuela is deliberately releasing violent prisoners early, including inmates convicted of ‘murder, rape, and extortion,’ and pushing them to join caravans heading to the United States. Some of the released prisoners have already been spotted within migrant caravans traveling from Tapachula, Mexico, toward our southern border as recently as July of this year, meaning they could already be in our interior.”
Lawmakers are now requesting the Department of Homeland Security answer questions about how the agency is preventing dangerous criminals from entering the country, a detailed headcount of how many released prisoners have been encountered or are expected to enter the US, and copies of related field intelligence reports from that last six months on the matter.
The letter comes after a leaked DHS intelligence report warned that prisoners freed from various Venezuelan prisons were convicts serving time for rape, murder, and extortion. A source speaking on the condition of anonymity said that since the United States has no diplomatic relations with Venezuela, identifying Venezuelans with criminal records is almost impossible.
During this fiscal year, the border patrol encountered over 130,000 Venezuelan migrants who had illegally entered the United States. Most Venezuelan migrants are allowed to stay in the US for humanitarian reasons.
