President Joe Biden walks along a stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, Jan. 8, 2023. The Biden administration has requested 1,500 troops for the U.S.-Mexico border amid an expected migrant surge following the end of pandemic-era restrictions. Andrew Harnik/AP
Why ending parole is essential for border security
Washington Examiner December 19, 07:11 AM December 19, 07:11 AM Video Embed
The flow of migrants illegally crossing the southern border has grown into such a flood that it is shutting down legal immigration and international trade. All vehicular traffic has been suspended in Eagle Pass, Texas. In San Diego, California, all pedestrian crossings have been stopped. In Lukeville, Arizona, the port of entry has been closed. In El Paso, Texas, freight train traffic has been shunted to a complete standstill.
President Joe Biden’s border crisis keeps reaching new levels of historic failure. Senate Republicans are negotiating with the White House and Senate Democrats over changes to the law that would force the president to take this crisis seriously. But he reportedly insists on retaining the power of parole, a huge loophole that would make the other reforms useless. If Senate Republicans don’t strip Biden of his parole authority, they will have failed to take meaningful action except, arguably, to make it worse.
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The White House has apparently agreed to two big concessions. The first is to tighten the “credible fear” standard that migrants must reach to have their asylum cases heard by an immigration judge. Second, it has agreed to create a new expulsion authority allowing Border Patrol to send illegal migrants back without getting a “credible fear” interview from an asylum officer. This power is said to be much like Title 42, except the triggering mechanism would be a specified number of migrants arrested each day, not a public health crisis.
These could be powerful tools to restore order but there is a catch, which is that Republicans have no way to force Biden to use these powers if they let him keep his parole power.
When a noncitizen is arrested for illegally crossing the border, Border Patrol takes his or her name, nationality, age, and biometric information such as photographs and fingerprints. Ideally, these migrants are then placed in detention while their paperwork is processed, and they are given a second interview with an asylum officer who determines if they meet the credible fear standard and can have their case heard by an immigration judge. This usually takes a day.
But with so many migrants, Border Patrol does not have the space to hold them or the asylum officers to interview them. There aren’t even enough agents necessary to complete initial interviews, which used to take two hours. Migrants are now given a “notice to appear” at an immigration court near their final destination and released into the country on “humanitarian parole.”
That is why so many migrants are flooding in; they know that if they are caught, Biden will just parole them into the country, after which they can say goodbye to any enforcement.
There is no guarantee that Biden will use new expulsion powers because they require agreements with other countries to take migrants back. He could simply decline to negotiate to get these. Under Title 42, for example, Mexico announced in March 2021 that it would take some families from Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador, but only if it had the room.
Migrants from other countries were supposed to be expelled on flights to their home countries, but the U.S. lacks diplomatic relations with some, such as Cuba and Venezuela, and others such as Peru and Honduras limit how many return migrant flights they will take each week.
So Biden won’t have anywhere to expel migrants to unless he forges new agreements with recalcitrant countries. This is hard work.
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To get his way, President Donald Trump threatened Mexico with higher tariffs, and it was thus that he was able to secure his “Remain in Mexico” program. It angered Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, but he eventually complied.
Parole power is Biden’s get-out clause, obviating the need for the hard work of making countries take back migrants. So the proposed reforms, with their massive loophole, will make the crisis worse and would give the perpetrator the chance to blame Republicans.
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