Republicans Share Misinformation On Biden Migrant Parole Program

LOADING ERROR LOADING While most of the debate over immigration focuses on the U.S.-Mexico border, one of President Joe Biden’s most effective policies so far has occurred elsewhere ― at airports. The White House announced the policy as part of a package explicitly meant to “increase security at the border and reduce the number of individuals crossing unlawfully between ports of entry.” The Biden administration grouped the program with others meant to encourage “legal pathways” into the United States ― such as increased refugee admissions and asylum opportunities in other countries ― and alongside harsher border enforcement for migrants who broke the rules. Did Joe Biden charter a flight to bring him to the U.S.?https://t.co/xz7JtvIPgF pic.twitter.com/2ns7C9aawx — Ted Cruz March 11, 2024 Meanwhile, Sen. Bill Hagerty, who last month proposed an unsuccessful amendment to limit the parole authority, falsely described the status quo as “using taxpayer dollars to charter planes that move and import thousands of illegal aliens into your states.” Tonight every single Senate Democrat voted against my amendment that would stop Biden Admin from using taxpayer dollars to charter flights for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens from their countries directly to American towns to be resettled. In late February 2024, the Biden administration argued in a court filing that it should not have to release airport data, saying revealing information about specific departure or arrival airports of parole beneficiaries could “reveal operational vulnerabilities that could be exploited.” CIS Senior National Security Fellow Todd Bensman wrote about that statement on the center’s website on March 4, calling parole beneficiaries’ flights “secretive” and the parole program “legally dubious.” Bensman had written about the CHNV program for months; in an interview last year with Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House strategist, he referred to it as an “airlift.” But his post about “secretive” flights took off, making noise around the world. “Parole programs were more effective at reducing illegal immigration than Title 42 because they substantially reduced total immigration by the hundreds of thousands, and shifted immigration to a legal route,” the report’s author, Daniel Di Martino wrote, concluding, “You could say that the Biden parole programs are an immigration restrictionism dream.” Early dramatic drops in border encounters have leveled off a bit since then, but numbers still show the program has successfully decreased overall numbers of border crossings between ports of entry from the four countries in the program.