After a record-setting year of encounters at the southern border, the Biden administration is seeking to speedily “parole” more illegal aliens into the United States.
A proposal by the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would radically expand rules to allow entry whenever and wherever “detention is unavailable or impracticable.” Of course, the administration has created that very situation with its designed-to-fail policies.
“By proposing rules like this, they are clearly trying to dismantle immigration enforcement at the border in its entirety,” says FAIR President Dan Stein. “[This] will perversely encourage more illegal immigration into the United States by promising parole and facilitating fraudulent asylum claims.”
Under current law, DHS can only release illegal aliens on parole one at a time, and even then, only for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.” The law limits paroles as “required to meet a medical emergency or necessary for a legitimate law enforcement objective.”
“Congress made clear … that illegal migrants are supposed to be detained: detained when they are apprehended, detained while awaiting a credible fear interview and if found to have a credible fear, detained until their asylum claims can be heard,” notes Andrew Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies.
Now claiming that it lacks sufficient detention space, DHS wants to speed up and expand migrant releases – even as the administration fails to request funds necessary to do its job. In fact, the president’s 2022 budget asks for fewer detention beds.
If Vice President Kamala Harris is serious about identifying “root causes” of illegal migration, she need look no further than the White House’s own policies. Early on, for example, the administration suspended Central American asylum agreements that encouraged migrants to obtain assistance closer to home, and served to deter fraudulent asylum claims.
Scrapping those accords helped to trigger a record run on America’s southern border. Gutting narrowly and carefully constructed parole protocols in order to release illegal aliens en masse surely invites more of the same.