Biden Dials Up More ‘Concierge’ Services for Migrants
The Biden administration is dramatically expanding the processing of asylum seekers along the U.S.-Mexico border by admitting nearly 40,000 migrants each month, doubling the current rate.
From strictly a bookkeeping perspective, it’s a win-win for the White House. The president gets more aliens into the country and the unprecedented increase doesn’t count as border-busting migrant “encounters” because they are entering through the CBP One mobile app at designated ports of entry.
What’s more, migrants can still get in without the app by attesting that “language barriers, illiteracy or technical issues” prevented them from accessing CBP One.
All nice and “legal,” except it’s not. It is all part of a massive and illegal abuse of humanitarian parole authority on the part of this administration. The goal is to move as many illegal migrant encounters off the Border Patrol’s books and shift them to the Office of Field Operations, which is tasked with processing and admitting migrants who use the CBP One app.
U.S. border officials are preparing to distribute 1,250 appointments each day — 38,750 each month — to migrants in Mexico so they can present themselves at ports of entry for an opportunity to be allowed inside the country to request asylum.
Officials have been processing just over 20,000 asylum seekers each month under CBP One. The administration unveiled the phone-based system in January to expedite admissions and discourage migrants from crossing into the U.S. illegally between ports of entry.
FAIR reported that virtually all CBP One entries were approved when the Title 42 health protocols were in effect. That acceptance rate doesn’t figure to decline now that the administration has lifted Title 42.
FAIR also noted that migrants without the supposedly required documentation have gained entry via CBP One. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., blasted the program as a “concierge service for illegals.”
Then there’s the matter of legal asylum itself. If and when migrants ever appear in immigration court, only a small percentage are actually granted asylum. And those whose claims are denied are rarely removed from the country.
Following a brief uptick in approvals (never higher than 46 percent) during the early days of the Biden administration, grant rates in America’s chronically backlogged immigration courts have fallen. Since July 2022, grant rates tumbled to 31 percent for expedited cases closed within 3 to 18 months.
Still, Team Biden is accomplishing Job One: getting more migrants into the country. Whether these aliens ever encounter an immigration judge, much less get removed, will be determined later – much later.