Case-by-Case: Returning Parole to its Proper Purpose
House Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability
2025-07-15
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Source: Congress.gov
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Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, Accountability, and the Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement will come to order. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare the committee in recess at any time, any point. The purpose of today's hearing is to examine the consequences of the Biden administration's abuse of immigration parole and how Congress and the Trump administration can work to address those consequences. I now recognize myself for an opening statement. Good afternoon again. Welcome to the Subcommittee Oversight Investigations Accountability and the Subcommittee on Border Security Enforcement's joint hearing on returning immigration parole to its proper statutory purpose. First, I would like to thank our witnesses for being here today. This hearing was originally planned for April 8th. However, due to last minute and unforeseen circumstances, it had to be postponed until today. And we appreciate our witnesses' understanding and grateful you can be here to talk about this important matter. On the note of witnesses, unfortunately due to a flight cancellation, one of our witnesses, Charles Marino, will not be able to join us today. I would like to welcome the gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Carter, who will serve on the Oversight Investigations and Accountability Subcommittee for the 119th Congress, and we look forward to working with you. We are here today because Congress must find a legislative answer to prevent the future abuse of parole, whether that means changing the standard for parole, expediting removal of paroles, or eliminating parole access to welfare benefits. We must act so that another administration cannot repeat, or even worse, expand what occurred during the Biden-Harris time period. From February 21 to February 2025, Under the Biden-Harris administration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered more than 11 million illegal aliens nationwide. According to our witnesses today, nearly 3 million individuals who had no legal reason to be in the United States were allowed through an unlawful mass parole program, were paroled into and by an overwhelmed Border Patrol.
We don't know how many people actually entered through these various unlawful mass parole programs because the Biden-Harris administration refused to give us numbers and data, and that's even after former Chairman Greene issued a subpoena for the data. Why are they hiding the numbers? Because parole was out of control, and it would have been a political disaster if the American people knew how bad it was. And they abused this authority in support of an open-ended borders agenda. Congress created immigration parole to provide temporary entry into small numbers of aliens on a case-by-case basis. Started 60 years ago, and it was designed to be for a significant public benefit, this case-by-case temporary pause in normal processing, or a urgent humanitarian reason. Presidents and cabinet level officers in the past have used it to enable essential witnesses to cross the border, testify at criminal hearings, or allow illegals with dire medical conditions to receive aid in American hospitals. One former senior ICE official has said that he paroled just two individuals in his entire career. No administration abused parole to such a degree and with such flagrant disregard for congressional limitation as compared to the Biden-Harris administration. While that administration, and then at the time, Secretary Mayorkas refused to provide Congress with clear information their playbook was clear. The administration exceeded, exceedingly expanded existing parole programs such as the Cuban Family Reunification Program to an amount that strained DHS screening and vetting capabilities. Second, the Biden-Harris administration reintroduced ineffective parole programs that the first trump administration ended like the central american miners program the trump administration ended these because they served no purpose other than promoting greater illegal immigration and encouraging the exploitation of unaccompanied minors third the biden harris administration just invented new parole programs to release individuals from afghanistan cuba nicaragua venezuela colombia haiti into the interior
Slapping parole on an inadmissible aliens file, releasing them into the interior doesn't magically make one less inadmissible. It just means you're not following the laws intended. The parole vetting was so inadequate that one DHS inspector general report found that three Afghan parolees had derogatory information related to felonies in the United States, and at least one had an indication of terrorism-related activity. An additional Afghan national who received parole through Operation Allies Welcome was arrested in my home state, in Oklahoma City, for plotting an Election Day terrorist attack for ISIS. While Republican members of this committee and millions nationwide recognize the national security threat of providing parole to poorly vetted Immigrants, the Biden-Harris administration surged, making it even easier for more individuals to apply for parole through a CB1 application. We even found that during the administration that cartels hijacked that CB1 app to create appointments for would-be parole for a fee, of course, so that the administration parole program was helping cartels pocket more dollars from desperate individuals. The Biden-Harris administration also raised the legal requirement for granting parole, allowing entry to individuals if they could find a sponsor who could financially support them once within the United States, even though the law requires parole to be granted only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit. By law, that is what it stated before it was upended. Even when an internal DHS report indicated thousands of potential parole sponsors were filing out fraudulent applications and supporting their financial statements with illegal income, the Biden-Harris administration continued accepting applications after just a month-long process pause in their review of the program, and that did not last. If this wasn't bad enough, the DHS Inspector General published a report this month stating that during the Biden-Harris administration, DHS did not have a process to address parole expiration.
Furthermore, DHS did not prioritize taking enforcement action for paroles remained in the United States after their parole had expired, usually a one-year or a two-year time period. The report concluded that DHS had no assurances that paroles were lawfully present in the United States after their parole expired. When you apply these findings to the estimated millions of parolees let into the country during the Biden-Harris administration, it's very troubling. The administration flagrantly abused parole, and it has serious consequences that continues for the American people.
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