By Todd Watkins | Commentary, Special to Rocky Mountain Voice
Since the Biden Administration took office in January 2021, upwards of 10 million illegal aliens have entered the United States. The official DHS totals are somewhere in the mid-nine million range, while other sources have claimed closer to 12 million.
These are just the subjects we know about. These are the “encounters” at the border by Border Patrol, the entries without inspection. These numbers don’t include the “gotaways” — the ones Border Patrol didn’t encounter –- which are around 1,500 each day. That’s another nearly two million since the Biden Administration took office.
None of these numbers include those aliens who schedule an “appointment” at a port of entry (POE) via the CBPone app. These aliens have no authorization or right to enter the U.S. (no entry documents), but the Biden Administration created this techno work around to allow aliens to, basically, schedule their illegal entries by arriving at a POE without documents, without any permissions or rights to enter the U.S. There is no legal precedent or reason to do this, and any plain reading of immigration law would indicate that these subjects should be denied entry into the U.S. Prior to 2021, they would have been denied entry into the U.S.
In both scenarios described above, non-U.S. citizens with no entry documents are entering the U.S. Some are “inspected” at a POE by CBP Officers, while the vast majority illegally enter the U.S. between POEs and are apprehended by Border Patrol. In both scenarios, these subjects are processed for a removal hearing before an immigration judge (because none has a legal right to remain in the U.S.). In both scenarios, these subjects make a Credible Fear claim of returning to their countries of citizenship. And in both these scenarios, U.S. officials (CBP and ICE) release them into the U.S. with a promise to appear for their often times not yet scheduled immigration hearings.
A review of Immigration Law (Title 8 of the U.S. Code) quickly reveals that there is no legal reason or authority to do this. Any plain reading of Title 8 makes abundantly clear the requirement to detain illegal aliens (all of these subjects are illegal aliens per Title 8) until they are either removed from the U.S. or are granted some sort of relief by an immigration judge. None of this is happening. In fact, in many instances, Border Patrol is processing illegal aliens for removal and then releasing them onto the streets because there is no room to detain them. In 100 years of Border Patrol history, this never happened until now.
Why is this happening? How can U.S. law enforcement officials release illegal aliens from their custody into the U.S.? Isn’t this illegal? Many would argue that it is.
Releasing illegal aliens from custody violates the very laws these officials are sworn to enforce. To the first two questions, the answer is parole. The DHS Secretary has a discretionary authority to parole an otherwise illegal alien into the U.S. under special circumstances. Typically, these are humanitarian or for the benefit of the U.S. The most common examples are allowing an alien to enter the U.S. to receive lifesaving medical treatment in the U.S. that is not available in their home country (humanitarian), or allowing an alien to enter or remain in the U.S. to testify in a criminal case (benefit to the U.S.). Both scenarios are carefully considered, case-by-case applications of this discretionary authority. In any scenario, parole is temporary and ends once the reason for the parole has passed.
The mass, blanket application of parole because of lack of custodial facilities is a gross abuse of this discretionary authority. It is also a self-sustaining cycle: The lack of custodial facilities “forces” DHS to release illegal aliens into the U.S., which encourages more illegal aliens to come to the U.S. because they will be released into the U.S. on parole. Rinse and repeat. This cycle is further exacerbated because of the fact that DHS is not permitting additional custodial facilities to accommodate this record-breaking flow of illegal immigration.
There is no denying that the current immigration crisis is self-inflicted. It has nothing to do with lack of manpower, lack of resources, or lack of legal authority. The Bush Administration built up our border security infrastructure and agencies and every administration since has maintained that capacity.
The current immigration crisis is purely the result of (intentionally) bad policy. DHS has the manpower and the resources to secure the border. It also has the proper statutory authorities to do its job: Title 8 not only grants authority to U.S. officials to secure the border and apprehend and remove illegal aliens, it requires them to do these things. The singular reason for this crisis is the DHS Secretary’s gross and pervasive abuse of parole. The crisis would end tomorrow if this policy were reversed.
Todd Watkins is a retired U.S. Border Patrol Assistant Chief with 24 years frontline, intelligence, special operations, and national headquarters experience and the El Paso County GOP vice chairman.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.