Recently retired Border Patrol Deputy Chief Matthew Hudak told the Washington Examiner in an exclusive interview in May that while some parts of the White House and Department of Homeland Security prioritized following through on President Joe Biden’s campaign promises, they have pursued a plethora of initiatives that do not line up with the Border Patrol’s strategies.

“I think there’s portions of plans in different offices. I think the fundamental question is, ‘What is success?’ So to have a plan, you need to have a vision or a goal, something that you are trying to achieve and then you build a plan to get to it. And I think that’s part of the confliction that’s there right now is, ’Is your objective to secure the border and prevent anybody or anything from entering the country that you do not authorize?’” Hudak said. “That’s what I think when we look at border security. That’s what we look at — that nobody or nothing gets in without using the proper methods through the ports of entry and such.” 

But Hudak said if the Biden administration’s definition of “success” for border and immigration policy was to “allow as many migrants into the country,” then an increase in encounters would not be viewed as a problem and policies would be crafted much differently.

Biden’s first 100 days

Biden spent his first 100 days in office unveiling immigration executive actions, admitting more refugees, gutting a program that required asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico, and reuniting children separated from their parents under a 2018 Trump administration initiative.

Within weeks of taking office, the number of immigrants coming to the border soared. But Biden defended his administration when he said the government statistics blew the problem out of proportion, and he blamed his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, even as some Democrats pointed to Biden’s lack of focus as being part of the problem.

Hudak and other officials accused the Biden administration of silencing them as the crisis began in early 2021 and continues today.

Behind the scenes, Hudak said he had not seen a strategy for the border, much less a desire to lower the number of encounters.

“Part of the challenge is there really is not a consistent view or a shared view of what exactly the right outcome is so you end up with actions, policies that are all individually working in their own direction that really ultimately compete against each other,” Hudak said. “I think that’s what we see play out on the border right now.

“If your perspective is, ‘I want to focus on security at the border so I don’t have people or things sneaking by me,’ then it has not been successful and you’re not doing things in a way that support that,” Hudak continued. “So I think it really comes down to what is the success that you are trying to achieve? And then that should be the comparison in the measure for the results you see.”

Forty months in crisis

The crisis at the nation’s borders will hit a new record later this month when the number of immigrants encountered attempting to enter the United States is expected to surpass the 10 million mark under the Biden administration.

At no time in history during any White House administration has that many people come to the border — even in two terms. 

The situation has triggered criticism from Republicans, who have accused the Biden administration many times in congressional hearings of failing to respond adequately to the unprecedented surge of immigrants over the past 40 months.

Jonathan Fahey, former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, agrees with Republicans’ sentiment and said the lack of decline in illegal immigration to the U.S. is the White House’s fault.

“The reason for the unsecured border is the Biden administration has pursued an Open Border policy, which entails refusing to enforce existing law and actively thwarting any attempts by others to enforce the law,” Fahey, partner at Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinsky and Josefiak PLLC, said in a statement. “In doing so, they have put their political agenda ahead of public safety and national security.”

Nonpartisan think tank Bipartisan Policy Center’s Theresa Cardinal Brown maintained that no president has overseen a border that would meet the legal definition of a “secure” border.

“There are differing ideas of what a ‘secure’ border means depending on who you speak with. For some, it means literally zero unauthorized entries. In fact, that was a definition of operational control included in the Secure Fence Act of 2006, but one which the DHS under the Bush administration pushed back on as it is an unrealistic standard,” Brown, a former DHS appointee from the Bush administration who now is senior adviser for immigration and border policy at the BPC in Washington, said.

No law enforcement agency in the world is successful at preventing “100% of crimes,” Brown added.

On the other hand, Democrats are more concerned with maintaining immigrants’ ability to seek asylum.

“For many Democrats, the problem is not one of illegal immigration, since it is legal under current law to ask for asylum even after illegal entry, but insufficient processing capacity for asylum-seekers,” Brown said. “But that supposes that we can continually expand our processing to address increasing numbers of asylum-seekers at the border.”

But one issue that has caught the attention of both parties is whether deterrence or facilitating asylum ought to be the focus of the government.

Changing migrant demographics

For decades, Mexican men were the large majority of immigrants arriving at the border until a decade ago when Central American families began making the journey, aided by cartels that recruit and charge people thousands of dollars each to move them to the U.S.

A CBP official told the Washington Examiner that the smuggling organizations have greatly broadened their scope since 2020, increasing at unprecedented rates the number of immigrants being smuggled from Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America.

The Biden administration has focused on improving conditions in Central America so that citizens of those countries do not flee, but that approach does not address the reasons immigrants are fleeing other countries.

“What you’re seeing is the cartels are recruiting from more and more nontraditional locations in order to maximize the money that they can make through human smuggling,” the CBP official said in a phone call Monday. “The problem is the laws have not been updated to deal with that changing situation.”

Some countries, including Haiti, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, do not take back their citizens from the U.S., making deportation impossible, and the cartels know that citizens of these countries will most likely be released into the U.S.

The department has been listening to employees from day one of Biden’s term, according to the DHS.

It hired several hundred employees to carry out intake of immigrants in custody rather than bring agents in from the field to do paperwork. CBP has also erected nearly a dozen tentlike facilities along the southern border over the past three years as overflow facilities for holding immigrants in custody.

Hudak said the foundational problem that he witnessed while second in command at the national headquarters for two years under Biden was the difference in approaches to achieving a “secure” border.

“It fundamentally comes down to the question of, ‘How do you define a secure border?'” Hudak said. “Our perspective has always been the lower amount of entries at the border or attempted entries, the better we can interdict those that do cross the border illegally, and we can stop them, whether it’s drugs, weapons, persons.”

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Brown agreed with Hudak’s point that to solve a problem, the problem must first be agreed upon in order to create a solution.

“Our existing laws, processes, personnel, and infrastructure are not sufficient to address this new migration, and I do not believe the previous strategies of deterrence and prevention are likely to be effective in the long term with this paradigm,” Brown said. “We do need our elected leaders to work together to design a new system at the border to address the new paradigm. That probably needs to start by agreeing on what problem (or problems) they are trying to solve.”

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

The mayor made the comment during a City Hall meeting in which he discussed the city’s lifeguard staffing ahead of the summer months. Adams argued that these positions could be filled quicker if the process of immigrants receiving their work visas was sped up.

“How do we have a large body of people that are in our city, our country, that are excellent swimmers and at the same time we need lifeguards — and the only obstacle is that we won’t give them the right to work to become a lifeguard,” the mayor said.

It was not specified why Adams stated that immigrants are excellent swimmers, though his comment could be in reference to the Rio Grande, which flows along the border between Texas and Mexico. In late 2022, over 1,500 immigrants crossed the Rio Grande into El Paso, Texas.

“With more than 197,000 migrants who have come through our care since the spring of 2022, Mayor Adams has been clear that there is nothing more un-American than not allowing someone to work,” a City Hall spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “The mayor has repeatedly pointed out that there are people in our shelter system right now who are qualified for vacant city jobs — in industries such as food service, construction, manufacturing, lifeguarding, and more — and yet, we cannot hire them because the federal government has not issued them work authorization and the right to work. Anyone who is trying to make more out of the mayor continuing to make that point today is missing the forest for the trees.”

Adams also listed several other positions in the city that could be filled with immigrants, including food service and nursing. He argued that the work visa process for immigrants would be expedited if there was a shortage in these fields, adding that “it’s the same for lifeguards.”

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The statements from the mayor were made on the same day that Jerome Powell, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, said the labor market was “very, very strong,” attributing part of this to the “millions” of immigrants who have joined the workforce since 2021. Since January of that year, when President Joe Biden took office, more than 6 million immigrants have illegally crossed the southern border, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. 

The Washington Examiner contacted Adams’s press office for comment.

Jerome Powell, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, said Tuesday that the labor market was “very, very strong,” partially due to the “millions” of migrants who have joined the workforce since 2021 amid the border crisis.

“I would also point to a fairly large influx of immigration into the country over the past couple of years,” Powell said during a discussion at the Foreign Bankers’ Association annual meeting in Amsterdam. “Those people are joining the labor force. We’re experiencing still a labor shortage in many industries, and so there are jobs, and they’re going to work, and they’re consuming, so that’s also boosting, boosting growth.”

Powell’s admission comes after he revealed last month that this year’s job forecast was expected to be strong again following last year’s gains.

“We’re still getting, you know, very substantial numbers of people coming to the country and going to work,” Powell said on Tuesday.

“I’m just giving you the straight economics of it. People come in, they can get a work permit, they are getting work permits, and they go to work, and they’re paying taxes, and they’re creating economic output. And there are millions of them,” Powell continued. “And it’s alleviating the labor shortage that we had in, in the industries that really had it the worst.”

More than 6 million migrants have illegally crossed the southern border since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The Biden administration has not publicly disclosed how many migrants were released into the country rather than removed. Unlawful entry is a federal crime.

Migrants are released into the country due to the government’s inability to detain as many people as are being apprehended. People who are let into the country may remain through court proceedings, which take several years.

People who claim asylum may obtain a document that allows them to work legally while they remain in the U.S. but will not receive that document for six months after seeking asylum, leaving many in limbo for months.

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The latest analysis of federal asylum data revealed that 1.3 million people have sought asylum and are awaiting a decision, meaning they would have the ability to work in the country legally, according to nonpartisan research group the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University in New York.

Migrants from select countries — Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela — who apply from outside the U.S. to enter under a Biden-era parole initiative are also given a two-year work permit once they arrive in the country. More than 400,000 migrants from those four countries have obtained work documents through the program since it was rolled out in January 2023.

Nonprofit Center to Advance Security in America filed a complaint against DHS this week after its owner said the federal government failed twice to adhere to federal laws that mandate it respond to Freedom of Information Act requests last summer.

“We just think that the American public deserves to see not only the conversations between DHS officials regarding this but also the media and also any sort of outside organization that we know advises them on things like this,” CASA Director James Fitzpatrick said in a phone call this week. “We want to see, you know, did this idea come from someone at DHS or did it come from an outside group.”

The app is run through the DHS agency U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which enforces the nation’s immigration, trade, and border laws. The app was created before the Biden administration to allow for commercial truck drivers to submit manifests digitally before arriving at a port of entry for inspection.

However, the CBP One app was expanded in January 2023 to allow immigrants who traveled to northern Mexico to request an appointment with a U.S. customs officer at the border to see if they are eligible for admission under parole or other lawful pathways.

The move was meant to deter immigrants from illegally walking across the border, but an investigation into the app by the Washington Examiner last July revealed that security shortfalls allow users to overpower the technology’s geolocation parameters and request appointments from anywhere in the world.

By being able to request an appointment, they can migrate to the United States knowing they will not have to wait weeks to months to schedule one only once they get to northern Mexico.

The large majority of the roughly 1,400 immigrants who obtain appointments with customs officers each day are paroled into the U.S. and allowed to remain for two years despite not meeting the threshold for refugee status or having a visa.

“It seems like it’s being implemented almost purposefully to skirt the law,” Fitzpatrick said.

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CASA filed two FOIA requests with the DHS and CBP last August but received minimal information.

The nonprofit watchdog chose to sue in early May after exceeding the 75-day threshold to lodge a complaint in court over the federal government’s failure to respond.

In an interview with the Washington Examiner, recently retired Border Patrol Deputy Chief Matthew Hudak spoke out for the first time since his departure and accused White House appointees within the Department of Homeland Security of policing the police’s media presence.

“Dealing with this tidal wave of humanity that was hitting our border on a daily basis — very quickly, news stories, statements being put out condemning our agents, being critical of their efforts, spread like wildfire, and we had our hands tied behind our back and were unable to counter or respond to any of that with the actual facts,” Hudak said in the May interview.

Hudak is one of three current and former senior federal law enforcement officials at the top of the 20,000-employee organization who told the Washington Examiner that they believe they were purposely kept out of the public eye at the White House’s order.

“We aren’t allowed to speak to media without HQ approval. It is almost always denied,” said one of the senior officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Office of Public Affairs at HQ. They have final say on all media engagements. Before that, the sector chiefs had that ability.”

Rodney Scott, the former Border Patrol chief, said in an interview that they were forced to stay out of sight when the border fell into crisis. More than 10 million people have been observed illegally entering the United States since Biden’s first day in office.

“The Trump administration came in, and they actually expanded and freed up communication significantly,” said Scott, who led the organization under the Trump and Biden administrations. “It was a very, very decisive, like 180-degree turn with the Biden administration. … But all national media has been restricted. I wasn’t allowed to talk to anybody.”

The transition from former President Donald Trump to President Joe Biden was a “180-degree” shift, according to Scott.

Trump ushered in border ‘transparency’

In the months leading up to the 2020 election, Hudak was chief of one of the 22 sectors the Border Patrol divides the northern, southern, and coastal borders into. He was no stranger to local and national media and had done in-person interviews in his Texas region with CNN and Fox News.

Facilitating media was a “relatively straightforward, easy process and done very frequently,” said Hudak, a 26-year agent.

“There was a process of notification if we were going to do on-camera interviews with local media, regional, or national. But I don’t recall one of those being denied when I was the acting chief in Del Rio Sector or chief in two other sectors,” Hudak said. “It was pretty seamless and a great opportunity for us to answer questions that were out there.”

Scott was national chief of the Border Patrol under Trump in 2020 and for the first six months of the Biden administration in 2021.

Early in the Trump administration, Scott had met with Trump when he traveled to San Diego, California, to see the prototypes for border wall construction projects.

“He’s just like, ‘This is a government Border Patrol agent that — he has no reason to lie. He’s just telling me what works and what doesn’t work.’ And then said, ‘Go tell America,'” Scott said. “That was repeated throughout the entire time that I was both a sector chief and the chief of the Border Patrol. … The direction I got from the Trump administration was, ‘America needs to know what’s going on.'”

With support from Trump’s political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol had each of its 22 regions create social media accounts to post regularly about the work of agents in each zone, including arrests of gang members, drug smugglers, and other criminals.

“We built structures, and we built processes to tell America,” Scott said. “There weren’t a lot of talking points that came down. It wasn’t like a scripted message, per se. It was just, ‘Make sure that you’re communicating.'”

CBP paid to have senior leadership employees take social media and media engagement courses to learn how to message and post content, Scott said.

Scott also pointed to monthly in-person border briefing press conferences in Washington in which he and the CBP commissioner announced monthly arrest numbers and fielded questions.

“No one was worried about anybody giving out information that, you know, made the administration look bad because that wasn’t the point. It was about facts and transparency and truth,” Scott said.

The Biden transition

In one of the most aggressive policy pivots between presidential administrations, Biden took office on Jan. 20, 2021, and signed executive orders undoing numerous immigration policies Trump had put into place, following through on a campaign promise to expand pathways for migrants to seek asylum.

Each president appoints executive office employees in departments and agencies. They advise career employees like Hudak and Scott of the White House’s wishes.

Biden’s political appointees at the DHS immediately clashed with career officials, Scott said.

“The new chief of staff for CBP walked into the building. Her name was Lise Clavel — kind of laid down the law,” Scott said. “One of the first things that they rolled out was that she will be managing all public relations, all media, and that we needed to go through her for approvals.”

Biden’s political appointees to the DHS and CBP introduced guidelines on when, where, and with whom executives at Border Patrol were allowed to speak. They were not put out in written form, according to Hudak.

Under Biden, requests from media to speak with Border Patrol agents like Hudak and Scott would be sent from the press office to be decided by Biden’s political appointees.

“The requests were very rarely ever denied, but it would be up until a short time before the interview, ‘No, we’re still waiting for approval,'” Hudak said. “Those things would never happen at that point. That would be a wave-off usually by the media side of, ‘We can’t hold an interview slot indefinitely.'”

Hudak was promoted in December 2021 from a chief in the field to second in command at the national headquarters. He said interviews with media while in the field and at headquarters stopped once Biden took office.

“That was even a little bit more frustrating. The sentiment was: ‘There’s no gag order. We’re not preventing anybody from talking, but we have to approve every request,'” Hudak said. “Not being allowed is, frankly, the same as being denied.”

The third official said the crackdown turned the Biden administration into the “least transparent administration we have ever experienced.”

Scott claimed that the clampdown on Border Patrol was intentional and based on political appointees’ vendetta for the organization.

“Based on my face-to-face conversations with these people for about seven months — actually longer than that because several of them participated in the transition … a significant portion of the individuals that came in under the Biden administration hated the Border Patrol,” Scott said. “[DHS Assistant Secretary for Border and Immigration Policy Blas Nuñez-Neto] told me to my face that ‘we do not like the Border Patrol. We do not trust the Border Patrol.'”

White House is looking to bring Nuñez-Neto over from the DHS ahead of the election, according to a senior official.

Hudak declined to comment about his experience working with Nuñez-Neto.

“I remember my deputy chief coming back … from a meeting with Lise Clavel about messaging, about communication, just completely frustrated because we had a proposed press release. And again, it’s just very factual,” Scott recounted. “They were pushing back on that, ‘Why do you, why do you have to talk about criminals crossing the border? Why do you have to talk about the gang members?’ And we’re like, ‘We’re just reporting what is going on — the totality of what’s going on.'”

Scott said Biden officials communicated to career law enforcement officials that they did “not want” illegal migrants “portrayed as terrorists.” The number of suspected and known terrorists arrested at the border has gone from a handful per year before Biden to more than 160 last year, per CBP data.

“No one was trying to portray anything. CBP was trying to report what they did with taxpayers’ money,” Scott said. “Anything that had to do with actual, like criminals crossing the border, threats, anything that we were just normally pushing out, we weren’t getting approval.”

Clavel, Scott said, would go between the White House and CBP for approval on border-related communications.

“They don’t like our messaging. They don’t want to talk about border threats,” Scott said.

A DHS spokesperson said the assertions were “categorically false.”

“A/S Nuñez-Neto has the highest respect and admiration for the U.S. Border Patrol and their dedication to the security of our borders and our country, and has consistently demonstrated that respect over the past two decades of his work on these challenging issues,” the DHS spokesperson said. “Ms. Clavel is also a longtime public servant and holds the deepest respect for the U.S. Border Patrol, and consistently advocated for them during her time as a senior leader in the Administration.”

Fielding a crisis

Border Patrol’s inability to speak with national media occurred amid extraordinary circumstances.

Border Patrol agents on the southern border saw an increase in the number of migrants caught illegally entering the country shortly after Biden took office in January 2021. In a matter of weeks, the number of people intercepted by agents skyrocketed from 70,000 per month to topping 200,000.

“The next thing we knew, we’re catching, you know, 11,000 a day. Unheard of, right? And this just beat the agents down, and they don’t see anybody giving them top cover at all. They don’t see anybody advocating for them,” Scott said.

Scott was forced out in mid-2021 after he penned a letter to superiors coming out against the Biden administration’s internal order for agents not to call migrants arrested at the border “illegal aliens,” a term used in federal statute that Congress wrote into law decades ago.

Scott’s successor, Chief Raul Ortiz, was kept out of the spotlight and only appeared before national media but in the presence of Biden officials who often occupied the podium.

“They never let him to just go on his own. It’s always a political appointee standing right beside him, or they would usually have Secretary Mayorkas or somebody else talking and then just have Raul standing behind him for credibility,” Scott said. “He was never allowed to speak, either — not freely.”

Ortiz declined to comment.

A CBP spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that the agency “is committed to transparency with stakeholders and the public that we serve and view public communication as a key part of our national security and public safety missions.”

“These assertions are false, as evidenced by CBP senior career leaders’ frequent media engagements and daily social media posts,” the CBP spokesperson said.

Del Rio ‘whipping’ incident

Despite CBP’s claim, rank-and-file Border Patrol agents have felt abandoned, particularly as incidents involving Border Patrol occurred and no one spoke out in their defense.

In the wake of the September 2021 incident in which agents on horseback were photographed trying to deter Haitian men from coming onto U.S. soil in Del Rio, Texas, Biden officials immediately made statements that painted agents as guilty of whipping migrants.

Biden told reporters that illegal immigrants were “being strapped” in an “outrageous” way and vowed, “Those people [Border Patrol] will pay.” Agents were later vindicated, but Hudak said it was an example of not being allowed to explain how horses are used, that agents are not even issued whips, and the circumstances in which the horses were deployed. That lack of information being shared publicly left agents looking guilty in the court of public opinion.

Hudak and Scott pointed to the social media pages that each region maintains as Border Patrol’s only public-facing outlet — one that has managed to slip under the radar, likely because of how small a following they have.

“I’m probably taking a risk that this administration will kill that, too, by talking about this openly. The only place America is still getting factual information about what’s going on on the border is through those sector chiefs’ local social media accounts,” Scott said. “Written in policy, by the way, they have the authority to push out that local information, what’s going on in the local area.”

Scott also lamented that the effort to be transparent with and available to national media through a monthly press conference in Washington had been done away with.

“They roll out the numbers now at, like, midnight on a Friday, three weeks into the next month. And then, they try to downplay the numbers and try to explain them away,” Scott said.

To him, silencing the Border Patrol leadership during the crisis hurt morale, as has been documented in verbal confrontations between Ortiz and agents during meetings.

“If you really don’t like this organization, and you want to create havoc or damage, actually trashing the morale, whether intentional or not, is not a bad thing,” Scott said. “The Border Patrol feels like — they’re just like, ‘We feel like we’re part of the smuggling network.'”

“I say all that to say, did it backfire? Or did they intentionally destroy it,” Scott said.

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CBP maintained that Border Patrol leaders “can and do conduct interviews regularly, which are available online from various news stations and websites.”

The White House, Nuñez-Neto, and Clavel did not respond to requests for comment.

DHS agency U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services filed a notice in the Public Register on Thursday of plans to more quickly remove from the United States illegal immigrants who seek asylum and are determined to pose a risk to national security or public safety. 

Until now, federal authorities have not been permitted to consider the risks early on in asylum screenings, allowing them to get released.

“The proposed rule we have published today is yet another step in our ongoing efforts to ensure the safety of the American public by more quickly identifying and removing those individuals who present a security risk and have no legal basis to remain here,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. “We will continue to take action, but fundamentally it is only Congress that can fix what everyone agrees is a broken immigration system.”

The attempt to prevent a small pool of illegal immigrants who seek asylum from being released into the country comes in the wake of high-profile crimes committed by immigrants who were let go at the border and allowed to be in the country, including the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.

Under the rule, asylum-seekers will still largely be released into the country and given documents to show up in immigration court, likely not for years due to millions of cases waiting to be heard.

“What this rule will do is allow them, when we have clear information that obviously disqualifies someone from asylum or withholding of removal because they are a threat to national security or public safety, to consider that information as early in the process as possible,” a senior DHS official who spoke with reporters Thursday said. 

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The DHS official said the Biden administration does not anticipate this proposed change to increase the length of time it takes to interview immigrants in custody at the border and could not estimate how many immigrants would be affected. 

“This really only applies to individuals who have a serious criminal history or who are, you know, linked to terrorist activity. And that’s inherently a small fraction of the individuals that we encounter or interview on a given day,” the DHS official said. “It will apply to the people that we are most concerned about in terms of the risks to our national security or public safety. And so it is a critical security measure that we think is prudent.”

Missouri lawmakers in the House sent Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas a letter Thursday requesting details on the approximately 400,000 non-U.S. citizens the Biden administration has used the parole process on to wave foreigners into the country.

“Despite allowing over 10 million illegal crossings at our southern border, the President is still finding new ways to bring foreign nationals into our country,” Rep. Mark Alford (R-MO) said. “President Biden has ignored the rule of law and allowed almost half a million individuals to fly directly into the United States.”

In early 2023, the Department of Homeland Security announced it was expanding U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s phone app, CBP One, to include a new feature that allowed up to 30,000 migrants from four countries with authoritarian governments — Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela — to fly into the U.S. for inspection, and they could then possibly be paroled into the country. The initiative is known as the CHNV program.

Through the program, residents from those countries request “advance travel authorization” through the CBP One mobile app to take commercial flights “at their own expense” directly to U.S. airports. The app itself does not grant parole.

Citizens of those four countries who are applying from abroad to fly into the U.S. for an appointment with customs at the airport must have a sponsor in the country willing to support them financially, undergo security vetting, prove they can pay for a plane ticket to a U.S. airport, be vaccinated for measles, polio, and the coronavirus, and travel within 90 days.

But Republicans raised concerns from the get-go that the move was a roundabout way to lower illegal immigration numbers by allowing otherwise inadmissible migrants into the country, hidden in plain sight at airports nationwide.

A recent Fox News report on airport arrivals in the first eight months after its rollout revealed that migrants using the program have flown into 45 U.S. airports, largely ones in South Florida. Flights have also arrived in Missouri, raising the lawmakers’ concerns.

Once in the U.S., a CBP officer will determine whether the immigrant should be granted parole and given permission to reside in the U.S. for two years if he or she meets “urgent humanitarian or significant public benefit reasons.” The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 does not specify what “urgent humanitarian” or “significant public benefit” can include or not include.

The six GOP lawmakers — Reps. Ann Wagner, Blaine Luetkemeyer, Sam Graves, Eric Burlison, Jason Smith, and Alford — told Mayorkas in the letter that the DHS has gone “far beyond” its authority as outlined in the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act.

“The Biden Administration has abused this authority to grant mass parole to foreign nationals based on state of origin, blatantly ignoring the law’s case-by-case basis provision,” the letter stated. “The INA explicitly states that granting parole does not change an individual’s immigration status, and that the individual must be returned to their home country and that their case shall ‘continue to be dealt with in the same manner as that of any other applicant for admission to the United States.'”

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Lawmakers asked for the DHS to provide by the end of May how the government is tracking the 400,000 migrants admitted through the CHNV program and how it plans to ensure each migrant is removed from the U.S. since parole is only intended to last for two years.

The Biden administration has maintained that the CHNV initiative is a lawful use of parole authority and that it has deterred migrants from paying criminal organizations to smuggle them over the southern border.

“I do think it was an important moment for those of us who do not live in border states to understand what border states like Florida and Texas are dealing with,” Violeta Chapin, a law professor at the University of Colorado, said during the Denver Gazette/9News town hall on Tuesday night. “It is very very challenging. … We have an extraordinary amount of unlawful migration to the United States because there are very few ways for people to come here lawfully. That’s why we still have 11 million undocumented people living here illegally for so long. There are few ways for people to normalize their status.”

COST OF THE MIGRANT CRISIS: WHY DENVER’S NEIGHBORS HAVE HAD ENOUGH

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman, a Republican who was a former U.S. House lawmaker, said the topic of immigration has turned into a political lightning rod with few in Washington, D.C., willing to make concessions. 

Douglas County Commissioner Abe Laydon, also a Republican, had some tough criticism for neighboring Denver and its recent embrace of illegal immigrants. Denver city officials have patted themselves on the back for their empathy in taking in thousands of undocumented migrants. 

Laydon drew a comparison of Denver, which has repeatedly pitched itself as a “welcoming city” for migrants to a struggling restaurant. 

“There’s a welcome sign in the restaurant where there is no food and no seats, and by the way, you’re going to freeze when you come in,” Laydon said. “This is not compassion. That is not welcoming.” 

He added that Douglas County, which has taken steps to prevent officials from using funds for undocumented migrant services, is a “commonsense approach.” 

“We’re not going to cut police services or recreational services for youth in order to address a crisis we didn’t create,” he said, referring to a plan floated by Denver’s mayor to cut city services in order to pay for the illegal immigrants. Following quick backlash from voters, the mayor scrapped the plan.

Denver has become one of the country’s flashpoints in the debate over illegal immigration. 

As of Tuesday night, more than 41,530 undocumented migrants have arrived in the city in the last 16 months. Caring for them has become a full-time job for the self-described “welcoming city,” with officials projecting a cost of $90 million alone this year, down from about $180 million.

Adam Paul, director for regional affairs for the Denver mayor’s office, defended his boss, Mayor Mike Johnston, a Democrat who Paul said started his term with “truly a crisis and one that Denver had never seen before.”

He said the mayor’s office often grappled with how to come together and help those most in need and “make sure that when we go to bed at night, we don’t leave folks sleeping on the streets whether you are experiencing homelessness or new to our community.” 

“That’s been the challenge we have been tasked with in Denver,” he said. “How best to find that balance and truly serve.”

He added that unless the federal government throws them a lifetime, they know they are in this alone. 

“We are tasked with a challenge that absent the federal government, nobody is coming to help,” he said. “But that’s the spirit the mayor leads with. We are going to try to fix it.’ 

Denver’s crisis has nearly depleted city resources and forced several departments, including police and fire, to slash their budgets to free up funds for the influx. The new arrivals have sparked backlash and prompted nearby cities and counties like Douglas to rescind welcome offers preemptively. 

Denver officials, similar to those in other Democratic-run cities, made splashy headlines about how undocumented migrants should be shown compassion and not the door, arguing they should be allowed to stay after arriving en masse at America’s southern border.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) has bused more than 100,000 illegal immigrants to Denver, Chicago, and New York City in the past two years. 

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It took the mayors of those cities just a few months before publicly admitting their budgets were in danger of buckling due to the exorbitant costs of feeding, sheltering, educating, and providing healthcare for undocumented migrants who crossed the border — in most cases, penniless and not speaking a word of English. 

In Denver, many nonprofits have stepped in, offering a patchwork of services that involves everything from being translators to opening their homes and wallets. But even some of them are being stretched to the limit. 

Dreamers, as the group is commonly known, did not previously qualify for federal health insurance through the Obamacare marketplace due to the lack of legal status but President Joe Biden’s new rule changes that.

Nearly 100,000 people enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program are eligible for subsidized healthcare plans starting on Nov. 1, when the Obamacare open enrollment period begins.

“I’m proud of the contributions of Dreamers to our country and committed to providing Dreamers the support they need to succeed. That’s why I’ve previously directed the Department of Homeland Security to take all appropriate actions to ‘preserve and fortify’ DACA,” Biden said in a statement Friday. “And that’s why today we are taking this historic step to ensure that DACA recipients have the same access to health care through the Affordable Care Act as their neighbors.”

“President Biden and I will continue to do everything in our power to protect DACA, but it is only a temporary solution,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement. “Congress must act to ensure Dreamers have the permanent protections they deserve.”

One caveat to the final rule is that DACA recipients are not eligible for Medicaid or parts of the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Nearly one year ago Biden first announced plans to expand Obamacare to Dreamers. It is unclear why it took the Biden administration so long to implement the plan.

In 2012, then-Vice President Biden and former President Barack Obama created the DACA policy to block deportation of Dreamers brought to the U.S. The policy also provides work permits for the more than 580,000 members of the program.

Under the previous rule, DACA members were not considered “lawfully present” and therefore not considered for marketplace subsidies. Many who were not covered by employer-based insurance were uninsured.

The new rule expands the “lawfully present” definition to include Dreamers, making them eligible for Obamacare benefits.

DACA has faced multiple legal challenges, with the Supreme Court blocking former President Donald Trump’s efforts to end the program. Since July 2021, new participants have been ineligible to join the program as lawsuits continue to wind their way through the legal system.

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The expansion of healthcare options to DACA recipients comes as Biden faces increased pressure to secure the southern border and stem the tide of immigrants entering the nation illegally.

Biden told Univision, the Spanish language network, last month his team was determining whether he could issue an executive action on closing the southern border.