Immigration officials were prepared to release three Texas men convicted of sex crimes against children after the Biden administration issued new guidelines to curb deportations.

Once President Joe Biden took office, he announced that he would be reversing former President Donald Trump’s asylum policies.

Under Biden’s new immigration laws, asylum-seekers would no longer be subject to the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which allowed U.S. border officers to return non-Mexican asylum seekers to Mexico as their claims were tried in U.S. immigration courts.

On Friday, Homeland Security officials announced that they will begin allowing roughly 25,000 migrants with active Remain in Mexico immigration cases to enter the U.S. starting Feb. 19.

As a result of the change in policy, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) dropped “detainer” requests – which require state and local law enforcement to hold a person who potentially entered the U.S. illegally – against 26 people.

According to The Associated Press, the majority of the 26 people were convicted of drug charges or drunk-driving offenses, but two men were convicted of sexually assaulting a teenager and a third was convicted of indecency with a child.

The three were not released after discussions between the state prison system and immigration authorities, but the process of keeping them in custody raised alarms that ICE was declining to detain convicts contrary to immigration law, officials said.

A Homeland Security official, who spoke to Sara Carter recently, said ICE officers are being kept from deporting many of these “illegal alien criminals, including those with far worse criminal records because of these new policies under Biden, which put everyone at risk.”

“Biden lauds that his executive orders on family separation, border security and legal immigration,” Carter wrote in a recent FoxNews.com op-ed. “His administration has said reversing the strict policies established under President Trump are more humane and productive for U.S. national security. However, the swiftness with which Biden signed these nine executive actions on immigration left little time for an assessment of what has or hasn’t been working.”

“It is presenting a very real risk to U.S. citizens, as criminal illegal aliens are not facing deportation after serving their sentences in U.S. prisons but being released to the public,” Carter said.

She continued, “Moreover, this progressive agenda will only perpetuate the crimes against humanity and the suffering faced by illegal immigrants when they arrive in a nation where promises made are met with a very different reality.”

Follow Annaliese Levy on Twitter @AnnalieseLevy