In January of this year, the Biden administration, wary of the optics showing mass illegal crossing of our southern border, announced the “CBP One” smartphone app. That app, like many things “virtual,” was based on magical thinking, that is, imagining that illegal aliens were not illegal at all. That’s what the app did, turned flaming illegal aliens from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Cuba into LEGALS, if only they used the magic CBP One app at an official border crossing.
The magic was so strong with the app that migrants using it received “paroles” that enabled them to be released on their own recognizance, after signing an agreement to report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in their town of their choice, where they can apply for a two-year renewable work permit. Easy-peasy.
The results of the program have been difficult to obtain, but the Center for Immigration Studies has obtained data through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. That data shows the following:
- Nearly 250,000 foreign nationals through August 2023 have been paroled into the United States at the land border ports after scheduling crossing appointments with the CPB One mobile phone app.
- Of that total, only 136,000 came from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, the advertised beneficiaries; the rest, more than 100,000, came from a startlingly broad array of 93 other countries.
- The Biden administration accepted foreign nationals from 24 nations deemed by the FBI “of special interest.” These included citizens of Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Yemen, Indonesia, and Afghanistan. In addition, the following were admitted: 3,852 Kyrgyzstanis, 1,843 Uzbekistanis, 780 Tajikistanis, and 339 Kazakhstanis, and 29 from Turkmenistan, plus many more from terror-plagued Africa countries such as Egypt, Senegal, and Mauritania.
The report on the CIS.org website contains much more.