The Biden administration has let 2 million illegal immigrants speed through a system that is supposed to limit entry into the United States on a “case-by-case” basis, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security.
The so-called parole system, which offers Social Security numbers and worker permits, has spun through one illegal immigrant “roughly every 28 seconds,” according to an analysis of the new data conducted by the Center for Immigration Studies.
“In the first nine months of FY 2023, DHS paroled in nearly 870,000 facially inadmissible aliens with no legal right to be here — one roughly every 28 seconds. That brings total Biden paroles to about two million, all under a restrictive authority Congress decreed be used only on a ‘case-by-case basis,’” said Andrew Arthur, a former federal immigration judge now with CIS.
The new data were in a just-released December report on parole requests by migrants. Parole is granted to “inadmissible” individuals by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. According to the report, “Parole allows a noncitizen who may be inadmissible, to enter, re-enter, or remain in the United States for a temporary period and for a specific purpose.”
The numbers reviewed by Arthur, however, show wholesale parole being granted to wide swaths of illegal immigrants and further feed concerns that the Biden administration is ignoring immigration laws to let in millions of migrants despite overwhelming opposition by U.S. citizens.
Since the report was pulled together, thousands more have passed in through the system. Immigration officials, for example, said last month, “Through the end of April 2024, 434,800 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans arrived lawfully on commercial flights and were granted parole.”
Parole is supposed to be a tight system according to congressional rules, but the administration has ignored that to let illegal immigrants pour in, the former immigration judge said.
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What’s more, in many cases, the parolees do not face the types of hardship back home that the pathway was designed for, he said.
“Parolees are flying in … from 77 different nations, including countries as diverse as Fiji and Iceland, Australia and Egypt, for benefits under the program. Those aliens aren’t seeking protection from hostile home governments; they’re ‘trading up’ for better economic opportunities, which in the case of the Cuban and Haitian parolees includes a full panoply of social-welfare benefits like Medicaid and food stamps — all of which you, the taxpayer, are providing,” Arthur said in his report.
