Biden’s New Processing Centers Will Put Migrants on a Faster Track to U.S.

The Biden administration is setting up immigration processing centers in Colombia and Guatemala to bring global migrants into the United States. Framed as a hemispheric effort to stanch human trafficking, the scheme is disingenuously designed to soften bad border optics while accelerating migrant flows to this country.

Though details are still in the works, the administration’s plan to put a United Nations affiliate in charge of the centers is problematic, to say the least. According to State Department guidance, new cases will go to a Resettlement Support Center staffed by the International Organization for Migration. Individuals not granted refugee status will be “considered for parole” into the United States.

Handing over operational control to pro-immigration advocates compromises whatever credibility the program may have and chips away at U.S. sovereignty. It’s not a stretch to see centers recruiting inadmissible aliens, steering them into asylum queues and clearing the way for those who pass a minimal screening interview.

“The plan is lawlessness atop lawlessness, all the way down,” says Mark Krikorian, head of the Center for Immigration Studies. “The Biden administration is trying to manage effectively unlimited immigration, but in such a way as to minimize bad press.”

In this respect, the program parallels President Biden’s recently announced deployment of 1,500 National Guardsmen to the southern border. It’s all form over substance, with the overriding objective to move migrants more expeditiously. Troops will not stop illegal border crossings, but instead will be assigned to process and transport migrants. Diaper duty, anyone?

For their part, the Guatemalan and Colombian immigration centers are intended to broaden so-called “legal” pathways into the U.S. via Biden’s promiscuous use of administrative parole power, in which Congress granted the Executive Branch limited discretion to admit inadmissible foreign nationals for a narrow handful of emergency reasons like medical emergencies.

“The statute authorizing parole explicitly states that parole may only be used on a ‘case-by-case’ and ‘temporary’ basis,” noted FAIR president Dan Stein, as the administration began ratcheting up parole admissions earlier this year. Some 1 million foreign nationals have been allowed to enter the U.S. as parolees since President Biden took office. “How can the Biden administration claim with a straight face that they’ll be issuing parole on a case-by-case basis when they’re creating industrial-scale programs out of thin air?” Stein questioned.

Not including untold numbers of “gotaways” who escape apprehension at the border, FAIR has reported that more than 5 million illegal aliens have been released into the U.S. since Biden entered the White House. That figure exceeds total legal immigration on his watch.

The scaling up of migrant processing centers outside the U.S. is yet another devious device to regularize irregular immigration – and to invite more of it.