Over the last fiscal year, more than 2.7 million people crossed the US southern border. People on the border are overwhelmed and dreading December 21 when Title 42 is set to end. Title 42 is a health order invoked at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic that allowed the federal government to turn migrants away after they entered the United States.
“Things are tough here,” said Billy Darnell, former sheriff of Hidalgo County, New Mexico. “We have people coming through our ranch. We’ve had as many as 25 in a bunch here and I’ve had to build a six-foot fence around my house with spikes on top to keep them from coming up to the door.”
And Mexican cartels are taking full advantage of the chaos.
“There’s been about five or six ranches along the border here close that have been bought by the cartels. And they bivouac out of there and they stage loads out of there and stage people out of there and drugs out of there,” Darnell said.
As the numbers continue to swell, the Biden administration has found a way to reduce those numbers – at least on paper.
For example, migrants are being routed into a little-known program designed to help people with special circumstances. Technically it also reduces the numbers of illegal crossers, because they are pre-approved before reaching the border, then transported into the US at taxpayer expense.
As of the end of June, more than 40,000 Ukrainians had been granted entry into the United States under the humanitarian parole program. It’s a program reserved for those with an urgent need because of threats to their physical safety in their home country. But now the program is being expanded, and the Biden administration is using it to quietly admit tens of thousands of people from all over the world.
Todd Bensman is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies. “Humanitarian parole is supposed to be given to you know, one person here, one person there on a case-by-case basis. It’s very clear in the Immigration and Naturalization Act what that authority is for – somebody in really dire straits.
The Homeland Security website calls this program an “Advance Travel Authorization,” and shows it started in late October. But one section specifically states that, “Parole is generally not intended to be used to avoid normal refugee processing or to provide protection to individuals at generalized risk of harm around the world.”
According to Bensman, however, that’s exactly how it’s now being applied.
“American non-profits are down there in force – an army of non-profits are down there helping these thousands of people very quickly get the paperwork they need,” he said.
“But they are applying that to masses of people all at once. And in order to qualify for humanitarian parole, pretty much what you need to do is just give them a tale of woe or say that you are gay,” Bensman added.
“And then the Mexicans will put them in federal buses, drive them to the nearest port of entry and walk them across. You can’t see it on the drones and you can’t see it in the statistics page.”
Bensman saw this happening while researching his second book on illegal immigration. He found that once the migrants are in America, they are released to seek work, put their kids in school, and start new lives. Unlike the Ukrainians who received humanitarian parole, however, most of these migrants have no plans to return home.
“This is a de facto amnesty, this is de facto asylum, it’s a de facto visa. This is de facto legal entry into America.”
“It’s an IQ test to me,” Darnell said. “I can’t believe that people don’t see what’s happening to this country, and I’m trying to call it like it is, but they’ve got us shaking our heads and wondering what’s going to happen.”
“Their idea is not ‘we want to stop, block, and deter. We want to make it easier and faster and safer so that more people will want to come,” Bensman said.
Darnell added, “It seems like the administration isn’t working for us. It seems like they are trying to tear this country apart.”
The remainder of this article is available in its entirety at CBN
