WASHINGTON, D.C. –– Today, House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark E. Green, MD (R-TN) released the following statement on a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memo allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to reevaluate inadmissible aliens admitted through the Biden administration’s mass-parole programs and determine where enforcement and removal proceedings are necessary. The memo reinforces DHS’ notice on January 21, 2025, expanding expedited removal authority to its “statutory maximum,” allowing law enforcement to remove inadmissible aliens who have been in the country for less than two years:
 
“A staggering 1.5 million inadmissible aliens were unlawfully paroled into our communities, with insufficient vetting, under Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas’ mass-parole schemes––the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan (CHNV) program and the CBP One app. Yet, it’s a new day for border security in America. Less than a week into his administration, President Trump is already dismantling the Biden-Harris administration’s reckless policies. By reinforcing ICE’s expedited removal authority, DHS can swiftly reassess and remove inadmissible aliens brought in under the previous administration’s unlawful mass-parole shell game.
 
“The Committee learned in 2023 that for months, around 96 percent of the inadmissible aliens who scheduled appointments via CBP One were released on parole. Even worse, the fraud in the CHNV program was so brazen that even the previous administration temporarily paused applications. Our laws mean nothing if they are not enforced. I applaud President Trump’s tireless commitment to restoring law and order at our borders.”

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, more than half a million inadmissible aliens arrived at U.S. ports of entry via the program through December 2024. Due in part to this abuse of parole, the House of Representatives sent articles of impeachment against then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate in April 2024.
 
According to produced documents, Joe Biden’s 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 August 2023, The Washington Examiner published a groundbreaking scoop showing that criminal cartels had hijacked the CBP One app using virtual private networks (VPNs), and were exploiting the app to make even more money by scheduling appointments for migrants outside the geographical range. In October 2023, the Committee obtained documents from DHS showing that between January 12, 2023, and September 30, 2023, 95.8 percent of those who scheduled appointments through the app were released into the interior.

In August 2024, Fox News documented how DHS paused travel authorizations for CHNV parolees 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, new documents revealed that inadmissible aliens in the program had 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.

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