The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) program to allow migrants into the country that would otherwise be expelled if they crossed illegally isn’t the success the Biden administration claims it to be, according to former senior officials who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
President Joe Biden announced Jan. 5 the expansion of Title 42, a Trump-era order used to expel certain illegal migrants to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, to include Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans and Haitians. The plan allows for 30,000 migrants of those nationalities to enter the country using parole authority, permitting them to stay in the country for a period of two years so long as they have a sponsor, and permits migrants that would otherwise be expelled under Title 42 to use CBP One, a mobile application, to book an appointment at a port of entry to quickly enter the country.
“These expanded border enforcement measures are working,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement Wednesday. “It is incomprehensible that some states who stand to benefit from these highly effective enforcement measures are seeking to block them and cause more irregular migration at our southern border.”
Former Deputy DHS Secretary Ken Cuccinelli called Mayorkas’ statement “bullsh**,” in a phone interview with the DCNF.
“Bullsh**, numbers are not down,” Cuccinelli said. “They’re at record levels. Even if they went down from those record levels in the absence of the previous month record, it’s still the record level. They’re literally importing an entire State of the United States of America every couple of months worth of people. We can’t absorb this. And they know that and that tells you that their intent is to undermine what anybody grew up thinking of as America.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded more than 2.3 million migrant encounters in fiscal year 2022 and more than 250,000 in December alone, making it the highest month on record.
“They’re using parole. Much like the Obama administration did DACA. It’s creating a loophole you can drive a truck through. What security comes from this? He can’t identify any security that comes from this. He can’t identify any reducing the flow of illegals coming to the country that he won’t admit illegals. Yeah, right. He’s facilitating it. The guy is an official government human trafficker,” Cuccinelli added.
Retired Deputy Patrol Agent in Charge of the El Paso Station Clay Thomas echoed that Mayorkas isn’t providing the full picture of what’s happening at the southern border.
“Everything’s not going great,” Thomas said. “This has just been implemented. There’s no metric to determine whether it’s a success or not. In order to determine success on something you have to give it time…a period of time to show a metric of success. I would assume that that would be no less than three to six months to be able to look and see how it’s working to problem solve it.”
“To call this a success. This early on after something is just being implemented is unreasonable,” Thomas said.
More than 7,500 Cubans, Nicaraguans and Haitians have so far been approved through the parole program, according to CNN. That number is separate from those admitted through CBP One.
Former acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan believes that the process to admit those who would otherwise be expelled is illegal, he told the DCNF.
“They are legalizing otherwise illegal activity and then claiming victory. So as the numbers of those illegally entering in between the ports of entry significantly recede, watch how the numbers at our ports of entry increase in kind! It’s an unlawful, perverse shell game, which serves to mask the crisis rather than address it in any meaningful way. They haven’t put forth a single policy to deter or disincentivize the flow nor to insert integrity back into a broken system through ending of catch and release. They simply transferred their massive release strategy to the ports of entry,” Morgan said.
DHS has been “secretly” using CBP One to admit migrants of more than 100 nationalities into the country for months, Center for Immigration Studies Senior National Security Fellow Todd Bensman told the DCNF after making the observation in Mexico before the program launched.
“It was entirely predicted and predictable that they would do this and it’s an illusion because for every immigrant that did not cross illegally, one got in through this program anyway. So for however many they feel like there would do reducing just as many if not more, are actually being crossed in under this legally questionable new alternative immigration admission system that they’ve created,” Bensman said.
DHS didn’t respond to a request for comment.
via wnd
