Congressional Subpoena Reveals Airports Used to Facilitate Illegal Immigration
FAIR Take | May 2024
Last week, the House Homeland Security Committee released government documents that reveal over 50 airport locations used to facilitate the Biden Administration’s illegal Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan (CHNV) mass-parole program. The Committee first requested the information on the CHNV program a year ago, and only just now did the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) finally succumb to a subpoena and provide details on illegal aliens who flew into the U.S. and were paroled into the United States from January to August of 2023.
🚨Is your city on this list? These are airports illegal aliens have flown into via the Biden admin’s unlawful CHNV parole program between January and August of 2023. pic.twitter.com/O59C4Kl394
— Federation for American Immigration Reform (@FAIRImmigration) May 1, 2024
The CHNV program is just one of several mass-parole programs in operation today. Since its creation in January of 2023, the CHNV program has been used to parole more than 400,000 otherwise inadmissible aliens into the United States. In the program’s first six months, as detailed in the DHS documents obtained by the House Homeland Security Committee, nearly 200,000 aliens flew into over 50 airport locations via CHNV processes. The top 10 airport locations were:
In addition to the 200,000 aliens paroled into the country from January through August of 2023, the DHS documents reveal that an additional 1.6 million foreign nationals were awaiting travel authorization through the CHNV program to enter the United States as of October 2023. Since parolees are not bound by numerical caps like legal immigrants – who often wait years or even decades to receive visas and permission to immigrate – all 1.6 million could eventually be granted an expedited entry, work authorization, and various welfare benefits at the expense of American taxpayers. Through the CHNV processes, up to 30,000 otherwise inadmissible aliens can be granted parole every month.
Under the Biden Administration, parole has been turned into a backdoor amnesty program for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens to enter the United States, bypassing the normal requirements for immigration. Parolees are able to obtain work authorization almost immediately and are eligible to adjust their status to obtain green cards and then citizenship. However, under law, the parole authority is only meant to be used in exceptional circumstances, on a case-by-case basis, only for a temporary period of time and for urgent humanitarian need or significant public benefit. Granting parole en masse is a violation of the law.
As detailed by FAIR, parole is now granted so broadly that it has reached the scale of our legal immigration system. In just the first nine months of Fiscal Year (FY) 2023, 876,577 paroles were granted by Secretary Mayorkas. In the first two quarters of 2023, the number of paroles granted (636,601) actually surpassed the number of green cards approved (545,419).
The unlawful expansion of parole becomes even more concerning when considering that parolees do not undergo the screening and vetting processes required for most other foreign nationals looking to obtain visas or visa waivers. Parole applicants are not mandated to submit for in-person interviews before entering the United States. To obtain permission to travel to the U.S., parolees are only required to submit limited and often unverifiable biographical information and a photo through the CBP One app, and only need a passport if arriving by air.
With these loosened vetting requirements, hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals with no legal basis to enter the country are being paroled in quicker, and with lower barriers to entry than lawful immigrants. DHS itself admitted that, “All individuals paroled into the United States are, by definition, inadmissible, including those paroled under the CHNV Processes.” Not only does this pose national security risks to Americans all over the country, but it is also incredibly unfair to legal immigrants who follow all the rules and wait in line to immigrate the right way.
The Biden Administration’s abuse of parole authority is yet another example of its complete disregard for our immigration laws. Without real policy changes, the American people will continue to reel from the impacts of an open-borders agenda. The Senate must hold the Administration accountable by passing H.R. 2, Secure the Border Act, which would implement meaningful changes to ensure that the parole authority cannot continue to be abused and unlawfully expanded.
To learn more about the Secure the Border Act, click here.