Since President Biden assumed office on January 20, 2021, his administration has taken deliberate actions to facilitate illegal immigration into the United States -- including assisting smugglers to complete human trafficking operations -- and to end the enforcement of immigration law in the interior of the country.
As long as jobs and taxpayer-funded government benefits are available to those who are unlawfully present in the U.S., preventing illegal immigration will remain a challenge, no matter who is President. However, the crisis we are now facing is due precisely to the Biden Administration making it clear to the world that anyone who can get into the U.S. by illegally crossing the border, or by violating the terms of their visa, will not be subject to immigration law unless they commit another serious crime; and even then the likelihood of removal remains slight.
The effects of the actions implemented by Secretary of Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have been obvious as the U.S. southern border has been overrun by illegal border crossers. This week we got a glimpse of some numbers which reveal the extent of the crisis; numbers Sec. Mayorkas has failed to provide to the American people.
Bill Melugin and Adam Shaw, who have done great reporting on the situation at the border, relayed information from documents leaked by a source in the Border Patrol showing that:
At least 160,000 illegal immigrants have been released into the U.S., often with little to no supervision, by the Biden administration since March -- including a broad use of limited parole authorities to make more than 30,000 eligible for work permits since August, Border Patrol documents obtained by Fox News show.
In addition, 40,000 more illegal aliens have been released since August "on their own recognizance," which means that DHS is hoping they check back in with ICE at some point in the future. It is not a notice to appear in court on a specific date. That's more than 70,000 illegal aliens released into the U.S. by DHS in less than three months who are essentially scot-free.
The use of parole shows the Biden Administration's deliberate attempt to regularize illegal immigration, circumventing laws that require the apprehension, detention, and removal of any alien who has no right to be in the United States.
Here is how former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott described parole:
'By law and regulation a parole shall only be granted on a case by case basis and only for significant humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit. Neither of these appear to apply to the current situation.
'As a field chief, I don't believe I ever approved more than 5 or 10 paroles in a year,' he said. 'When I did, I ensured that the alien was monitored continuously and was detained or removed as soon as the circumstances allowed.' (emphasis added)
[**NOTE: The Biden Administration also used parole to admit most of the Afghans who were evacuated followed the U.S. military withdraw. Only a small percentage of Afghans who came to the U.S. provided aid or assistance to U.S. forces.**]
The Biden Administration is abusing its parole authority to grant large numbers of illegal aliens open-ended work authorization in the U.S. Many of those who are not paroled in the country are still being released without notices to appear in court. Even without work authorization any illegal alien released into the interior will be able to work illegally with little hindrance because Secretary Mayorkas also announced that DHS will officially halt worksite enforcement operations targeting those illegally working in the U.S.
It comes as no surprise given months of enforcement roll-backs that another source at Border Patrol revealed that the agency "encountered" 1.96 million illegal border crossers in FY21, 1.6 million which occurred after Pres. Biden took office.
All of this comes as part of Mayorkas' announcement last month that DHS no longer is tasked with enforcing immigration law, the law he swore to uphold and is required to do in his job as DHS Secretary.
'The fact an individual is a removable noncitizen therefore should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them," Mayorkas wrote in new enforcement guidelines on September 30. 'We will use our discretion and focus our enforcement resources in a more targeted way.'
By which Mayorkas means that almost all those who are illegally in the U.S. will be exempt from any enforcement actions.
To top it off, on Wednesday Stephen Dinan at the The Washington Times reported that DHS was circulating a draft proposal the would "severely curtail its attempts to strip citizenship from people who were naturalized based on fraud."
Robert Law at the Center for Immigration Studies who worked at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under the Trump Administration said "By this policy, Mayorkas is saying that citizenship really is meaningless and that immigration fraud is rewarded."
ERIC RUARK is the Director of Research for NumbersUSA
