Critical Errors Revealed in Parole Program for Afghan Evacuees

FAIR Take | June 2024

A new report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) revealed multiple failures in the program to parole Afghan evacuees into the United States, otherwise known as Operation Allies Welcome (OAW). Perhaps most concerning, the report shows that DHS is not monitoring parole expiration for Afghan parolees.

Following the collapse of Afghanistan’s government in August 2021, the United States oversaw the withdrawal of roughly 97,000 Afghan evacuees. Around 77,000 of those individuals were eventually paroled into the U.S. for a two-year, renewable period, despite the fact that the law prohibits paroling in refugees and despite security concerns surrounding the relocation of tens of thousands of unvetted Afghans into American communities.

In June 2023, DHS announced that Afghans granted parole would be eligible to renew their parole status for a two-year extension. Unfortunately, according to the OIG, DHS has no process in place to monitor when parole for these Afghans expires. On top of that, officials from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) have all stated that they are not overseeing parole expiration, and do not believe it is their responsibility to do so. In short, instead of ensuring at least one agency is responsible for ensuring aliens whose parole expires are promptly removed, Secretary Mayorkas has utterly abandoned his responsibilities, which could result in tens of thousands of these individuals remaining in the United States unlawfully.

The report also revealed the government’s failure to initiate enforcement actions when Afghan parolees are denied immigration benefits. Many Afghan parolees have applied for additional benefits since their arrival. Of the 97,000 evacuees, 93,000 have applied for work authorization, and nearly 19,000 have applied for green cards to remain in the country. This interaction with USCIS would normally serve as an additional opportunity for the government to screen parolees for red flags. Indeed, when a parolee applies to USCIS for benefits, such as permanent residence or work authorization, the agency conducts biographic and biometric checks to identify any information that may make an applicant ineligible.

However, in its report, the OIG found that when USCIS denied an Afghan’s application for benefits due to derogatory information, further enforcement actions did not take place, even in cases where parole expired soon after the denial. As a result, the report notes that, “an OAW parolee whose parole expired and who has already been denied a benefit may not face enforcement consequences for remaining in the United States.”

In cases where USCIS did refer a parolee’s case to ICE for further review, the OIG found that the Biden Administration’s non-enforcement policies discouraged ICE from taking action. After the Afghan parolees had been resettled in the U.S. in the fall of 2021, ICE enforcement priorities changed. According to the September 2021 enforcement policy issued by Secretary Mayorkas: “The fact an individual is a removable noncitizen…should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them.” As a result of these changing priorities, the OIG found that as of March 2023, ICE declined 94 percent of USCIS referrals concerning Afghans with “egregious public safety concerns.” According to USCIS officials, the decline rate is so high because of misalignment between USCIS referral requirements for individuals under arrest or investigation for egregious public safety crimes and ICE enforcement priorities requiring a conviction.

In its report, the Office of the Inspector General provided five recommendations:

Recommendation 1: USCIS develop USCIS guidelines on terminating OAW parole and making referrals to ICE for enforcement action.

Recommendation 2: USCIS and ICE update the USCIS-ICE Memorandum of Agreement regarding USCIS data access limitations.

Recommendation 3: USCIS and ICE continue to review and update records for OAW parolees to improve data accuracy for individual records.

Recommendation 4: The DHS Secretary should clarify DHS component responsibility for monitoring and addressing parole expiration for OAW parolees without other long-term status to ensure individuals are lawfully present in the United States after parole expiration.

Recommendation 5: The Under Secretary for Strategy, Policy, and Plans coordinates with USCIS and ICE to develop guidelines for consideration of factors such as derogatory information and prior decisions on benefit requests during the re-parole and extension of parole processes.

DHS concurred with each recommendation but so far has not designated any specific component that will be responsible for overseeing parole expiration for Afghan parolees. Instead, two working groups will develop guidelines and processes for terminating parole and referring cases to ICE—but DHS doesn’t expect the groups to take effect until July 2025.

More broadly, the mass parole of Afghans serves as yet another example of the Biden Administration’s continued abuse of the law. The parole statute clearly prohibits the government from paroling refugees into the United States (unless there is an individualized exception). But the Biden Administration blatantly violated this law, bypassing the long-established refugee process, and then let its illegal, ad hoc parole program devolve into chaos. Now that the Afghan parolees are settled into communities, it has failed to monitor these paroles or initiate enforcement actions even when egregious public safety concerns are brought to the attention of our law enforcement agencies.

This is not the only abuse of parole taking place in the Biden Administration. Multiple, illegal parole programs have been put in place to bring in hundreds of thousands of otherwise inadmissible aliens from every corner of the world. In fact, according to new research from FAIR, in the first two quarters of 2023 the number of parolees surpassed the number of green cards approved. And, as FAIR’s Executive Director laid out in testimony before the House Budget Committee in May, individuals released on parole are one of the main sources of the cost of illegal immigration. Parolees are immediately eligible for work permits, Social Security numbers, Obamacare, and tax credits, and, after a five-year waiting period become eligible for numerous other federal benefits.

In the end, the latest OIG report confirms once again what has long been evident – the Biden Administration’s open-borders policies are deliberately designed to circumvent federal law and prioritize illegal aliens over Americans. We urge Americans, and their elected representatives, to demand that the Administration change course and hold it accountable.