The Biden administration has released into the country nearly all the inadmissible aliens who scheduled appointments through its CBP One mobile application so far this year, according to new information obtained by the House Homeland Security Committee.
Between Jan. 12 and Sept. 30, fully 95.8% of the illegal aliens who scheduled appointments to claim asylum through the CBP One app were issued a “Notice to Appear” and then were paroled into the interior of the U.S.
“Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas has utterly abused the CBP One app in his quest for open borders,” Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., the House committee’s chairman, said in a written statement.
Green’s committee obtained a document from the Department of Homeland Security showing that 278,431 appointments were scheduled for illegal immigrants through CBP One over nearly nine months, and 266,846 of them were released into the country on parole.
In January, the Biden administration began encouraging illegal aliens to use the government’s app to schedule appointments with U.S. Customs and Border Protection at a port of entry to begin an asylum claim.
Lora Ries, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, pointed out that use of the mobile app allows illegal aliens to be “paroled into the U.S., where they may or may not apply for asylum, but they can get work authorization and remain for two years.” (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news outlet.)
The Homeland Security Committee said it also obtained data regarding individuals “from a number of countries of concern” who made appointments through the government’s app and then were released.
Of 20,948 appointments made by Russian nationals, 19,780 were released on parole, according to the committee. Of 246 Afghan nationals who used the app to schedule an appointment, 229 were released into America; 16 out of 18 Iranian nationals who made appointments were released.
Of 36 Chinese nationals who made appointments, 88% were also released, the committee said.
“These numbers are proof that Mayorkas’ operation is a smokescreen for the mass release of individuals into this country who would otherwise have zero claim to be admitted,” Green said, adding:
At a time when global tensions are rising, and our enemies are growing bolder, releasing tens of thousands of these people into our communities—especially when they have not received adequate, if any, vetting—is irresponsible. It shouldn’t take a subpoena threat from Congress to get these answers, but we are going to keep fighting for the truth.
In June, Green announced an investigation into Mayorkas’ handling of the surge of illegal immigrants at the southern border, saying the probe is part of his committee’s oversight duties and pledging to leave “no stone unturned” to get the facts.
Four months later, his committee has held hearings focusing on what Republican members call Mayorkas’ dereliction of duty, how the border crisis helps drug cartels, and what the human and financial costs are.
News of how many illegal aliens have been released into the U.S. after scheduling appointments through the app comes less than a week after CBP reported complete numbers for illegal aliens encountered on America’s borders in fiscal year 2023. As The Daily Signal reported Saturday, those numbers reveal that a record 3.2 million illegal aliens were encountered at U.S. ports of entry, north and south, as well as between those ports.
With growing concerns over terrorists and other bad actors taking advantage of the border crisis to enter the country, CBP’s San Diego Field Office’s intelligence unit has warned agents to be on the alert for individuals attempting to cross the border who have ties to Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The San Diego unit “assesses that individuals inspired by, or reacting to, the current Israel-Hamas conflict may attempt travel to or from the area of hostilities in the Middle East via circuitous transit across the southwest border,” according to the memo, which was first reported Monday by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Foreign fighters motivated by ideology or mercenary soldiers of fortune may attempt to obfuscate travel to or from the U.S. to or from countries in the Middle East through Mexico,” that CBP memo says.
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