Chairman Green on Biden Harris Administration’s CHNV Friday News Dump: “Yet Another Optics Driven Smokescreen”

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark E. Green, MD (R-TN) released the following statement upon the Biden-Harris administration announcing new guidelines for the mass-parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV):
"This move is yet another optics-driven smokescreen from the Biden-Harris administration. There are numerous other ways these inadmissible aliens could be-and likely will be-allowed to stay, including through applying for asylum or Temporary Protected Status. Even if they don't, however, given ICE's low enforcement rates under this administration, most simply will not be priorities for removal.
"Remember, a recent DHS Inspector General report found that the Biden-Harris administration still has no plan to remove the 77,000 Afghan nationals who were paroled in 2021 and 2022, and no effective process for monitoring parole expiration. So, it is hard to believe the Biden-Harris administration has a plan to remove a far greater number of inadmissible Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan nationals paroled into the country at their direction."

Background: The Immigration and Nationality Act allows parole to be granted only "on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit." However, since the CHNV program's inception, through August 2024, nearly 530,000 inadmissible aliens have arrived at U.S. ports of entry via the CHNV program.
In April 2024, the Committee released documents obtained following a subpoena of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that identified over 50 airport locations, including the nation's capital, where inadmissible aliens have been flown into the country and processed by DHS for release. Chairman Green subpoenaed DHS on August 22, 2023 and sent a follow-up letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in September 2023, demanding compliance with the Committee's requests for critical data and information regarding the CHNV parole program. The Committee first requested this information on April 27, 2023.

According to produced documents, as of mid-October 2023, there were 1.6 million inadmissible aliens awaiting travel authorizations through the CHNV program. In the documents, DHS admitted that none of these individuals have a legal basis to enter the country before being paroled through the program, stating, "All individuals paroled into the United States are, by definition, inadmissible, including those paroled under the CHNV Processes."

In a recent report, Fox News documented how DHS paused travel authorizations for CHNV parolees earlier this year due to fraud discovered among those applying to sponsor inadmissible aliens seeking entry. Adam Shaw reported, "The internal report found that forms from those applying for the program included social security numbers, addresses, and phone numbers being used hundreds of times in some cases. … 100,948 forms were filled out by 3,218 serial sponsors-those whose number appears on 20 or more forms. It also found that 24 of the 1,000 most used numbers belonged to a dead person. Meanwhile, 100 physical addresses were used between 124 and 739 times on over 19,000 forms."

In June, an independent think tank released new documents that showed inadmissible aliens have arrived not just from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, but from more than 70 others worldwide, including Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Great Britain, Hong Kong, St. Lucia, and Sweden. Evidently, many who are making use of the Biden-Harris administration's mass-parole program have settled comfortably in other nations and likely have no legitimate grounds for claiming protections within the United States.

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