Ex-ICE director says MORE Haitian migrants have been released into US than DHS ...

Former ICE Director Tom Homan accused Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of misleading the public after the Biden official finally said 12,000 Haitian migrants have been released into the U.S. 

'It's much more than that and he knows that,' Homan said.

In an interview with Fox on Monday morning, the Trump-era immigration official said Mayorkas knowingly underestimated the number of migrants successfully crossing the southwest border.     

'When he said the 8,000 will return to Mexico, went back to Mexico, he realizes they went one or two miles down the line and came into the United States because they surged so many resources to Del Rio they left 220 miles of border unguarded,' he said.

The Secretary of Homeland Security told Fox News on Sunday that approximately '10,000 or so - 12,000' mostly Haitian migrants had been released into the country. 

'It could be even higher,' he added. 'The number that are returned could be even higher. What we do is we follow the law as Congress has passed it.'

Many of the thousands who crossed the border over the last week have temporarily settled at an encampment under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas. Around 30,000 Haitians traveled to the border city in the last month, the Biden administration admitted.

Roughly 12,400 Haitian migrants are waiting to have their cases heard by immigration judges, while 5,000 are being processed by DHS and 3,000 are in detention.   

On Monday morning Homan accused Mayorkas of lying again over the 12,400 figure.

'When you say 12,000 are in immigration proceedings, they are not. That's what the secretary leads you to believe,' he said.

He said many of those thousands of migrants were given a 'Notice to Report' which means they would only be in that judicial pipeline if they 'voluntarily show up and turn themselves in' - and Homan believes they won't. 

A Notice to Appear is typically the first step in the court system that leads to deportation. A 10-day window is usually the wait time between being served an NTA and the first court hearing date, but migrants can apply to extend the requirement, like if they are in ICE custody. 

However, under the Biden administration, Border Patrol has been giving migrants a 'Notice to Report.' That document provides a 60-day window during which migrants have to turn themselves in to an ICE office, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.

Those who don't show up within the 60-day window can then be subjected to an NTA, if ICE tracks them down. 

'It clearly says at the bottom of the form, 'You are not in immigration proceedings. You won't be detailed, ICE is not going to detain you for humanitarian reasons,' Homan claimed. 

'So the secretary is misleading on what he told Chris Wallace.' 

In the same interview, Mayorkas acknowledged that some of the thousands of migrants who had been camped out under a bridge near Del Rio, Texas, had not been tested for Covid-19.  

Lance Gooden was among the Republican's to hit out at Mayorkas' handling of the border crisis.

'Why hasn't Mayorkas been FIRED?,' the Texas congressman wrote in a tweet, detailing the Homeland Security chief's recent admissions.

Lauren Boebert, a Republican from Colorado, also criticised Mayorkas, apparently comparing the release of untested Haitians to an incident in which a mother claimed her child was kicked off a flight from Colorado to New Jersey for not wearing a mask.

'Two-year-olds are getting forced off planes for not wearing masks while Mayorkas just released 12,000+ illegals into the country without so much as a COVID test. 

Senator Ted Cruz also slammed what he called 'Bizarro-world Biden rules' in a tweet.

He wrote that for American citizens, the rule is to 'get the vaccine or you're fired' but for 'illegal immigrants' it's 'no testing, no vaccines & being sent to every community in America!'

When asked by Fox how many of the group under the bridge - which official figures put at 15,000 at its peak - had been tested for coronavirus, Mayorkas insisted the administration was following 'strict Covid testing protocols'.    

'We test, isolate, and quarantine unaccompanied children. We work with nonprofit organizations to test families,' he said.

'Those who are in ICE custody are tested, isolated, and quarantined. Those who are expelled under the Title 42 Public Health Authority are returned immediately. They are not placed in immigration court proceedings, and those we do not test, because they are returned immediately.'

Mayorkas' response appears to contradict comments he made to reporters a day earlier, suggesting that none of the people camped out under the bridge had been tested.

When asked how many of the group who were living in cramped conditions under the bridge had tested positive for the virus, Mayorkas said he did not know.  

'We did not test that population of individuals,' Mayorkas said. 'We do not know, I do not know, I should say if I may be perfectly accurate, I do not know if anyone was sick with COVID. 

'We certainly had some people get sick, not with COVID to my knowledge and we addressed their illnesses.'

Mayorkas' comments come as more Haitians make their way to the U.S., with images emerging on Saturday of a caravan travelling to the Panamanian border from Acandi, Colombia. 

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and has been ravaged by two major earthquakes, one in 2010 and one in August this year that killed more than

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