For more than a decade now the Department of Homeland Security has compiled an annual report on the number of illegal aliens who remain in the United States after their visas expire and delivered it to Congress. Shortly after it’s delivered, the report, officially known as the Entry/Exit Overstay Report, is made available online for the public. Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work. But this year, the report was delivered on schedule but DHS still hasn’t made the information available to journalists or the voters. So what’s up with that? Given how hot of a topic immigration has been in 2021, you’d think that this information would be of value, but for some reason, Homeland Security is dragging its feet. They have also failed to respond to requests for comment on the report from media outlets. It’s almost as if the report doesn’t even exist. (Free Beacon)

The Biden administration has yet to publicly disclose critical information on the number of illegal immigrants in the United States, a violation of congressional guidance and a departure from federal transparency standards.

The Department of Homeland Security has given Congress its report on the number of foreign nationals who remain in the United States on expired visas, but the information has not been subsequently released to the public, the Washington Free Beacon has learned. Stretching back to at least the Obama administration, DHS has made the annual report on suspected visa overstays available to the public shortly after giving it to Congress.

Requests for comment to various agencies within DHS on the report went unanswered. Congress has mandated that the report is released online to the public, out of concern that “the large number of annual in-country alien overstays threatens national security and the integrity of legal immigration.”

The public release of this report isn’t optional. It’s the law as mandated by Congress. Wasn’t this supposed to be “the most transparent administration ever” after the supposed secrecy and treachery of the Trump administration? This doesn’t seem very transparent at all.

This is all supposed to be standard operating procedure at DHS. As an example, you can see the fiscal year 2019 report here. At that time, DHS estimated that there were more than 670,000 people in the country who had overstayed their visas. While that’s not nearly as large as the number of migrants who simply cross the borders illegally, it’s still a significant chunk of the estimated 12 million illegal aliens currently in the United States.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be all that surprised at the Biden administration’s reluctance to release this mandatory report. After all, it would only be another reminder of the number of people pouring across the southern border on a daily basis. And immigration is one of the topics where Joe Biden’s approval numbers are significantly underwater.

This failure to deliver is being noted as yet another area where the Biden administration has been clearly opposed to transparency. The nation was similarly unaware that private flights were delivering illegal aliens to multiple locations around the country and releasing them in the dead of night until some reporters noticed it and began investigating. And whatever happened to that plan that was supposedly in place to get every last American citizen out of Afghanistan well before now? We don’t know because the White House hasn’t mentioned the subject in ages.

So much for transparency, I suppose. I’m sure we’ll get to see the report sooner or later, but Joe Biden is once again breaking with normal protocol and keeping pertinent information from the public and from the media. And that’s no longer a surprise at this point.