According to a controversial report, migrants were allowed to fly into the United States using a smartphone application operated by its Customs and Border Patrol. Hundreds of thousands of people have arrived like this, flown in directly from their origin country. The same app has been used to let in people on the southern border, as well.
According to a recent report, the Biden administration has used an app to arrange for the direct arrival of hundreds of thousands of foreign migrants into the United States.
Mark Morgan, the former head of Customs and Border Protection, discussed the problem with Jan Jeffcoat on NBC’s The National Desk:
“This is what they’ve done, this administration. They’ve made a deal with migrants from all over the world,” he said. “They said, if you were framed from illegally entering along the southern border in between the ports of entry, what we’ll do is we’ll let you fill out a couple of lines of paperwork online and we’ll let you fly into 43 different airports in the United States who will process and release you. So it’s absolutely to cover up bad political optics.”
Arrival Undocumented: Only a Tap Away
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, between January 2023 and December 2023, at least 320 000 undocumented immigrants were permitted to enter the country by air via a contentious Biden administration program that utilized the CBP One app, which was developed to enable immigrants to request parole.
Adults who are eligible for work authorization may have their legal status extended for two years under the Parole program.
According to internal federal government documents obtained by CBS News, migrants in Mexico have submitted more than 64.3 million requests to enter the United States through the same smartphone app that the Biden administration has attempted to position as the primary entry point to the American asylum system at the southern border.
According to internal documents, during the first year of the program’s implementation, tens of millions of migrants applied for a desired appointment to be processed by U.S. immigration authorities at an official border crossing using the phone app called CBP One. According to the documents, the procedure has so far allowed close to 450 000 migrants entry into the United States.
The records span 13 months, beginning on January 8, 2024, the day the Biden administration began enabling immigrants to make appointment requests through CBP One. The monthly average of appointment requests made by migrants is slightly less than 5 million.
Since the total includes repeated attempts by the same individuals, the number of requests does not represent unique individuals.
CBP One: Assistance Instead of Deterrence
Through the CBP One system, the Biden administration hopes to deter migrants from attempting unauthorized border crossings between ports of entry. In contrast to those who enter the nation illegally, migrants after being released from U.S. custody, one appointment may apply for a work permit; they are not required to meet the more stringent asylum requirements of a Biden administration regulation.
According to this rule, migrants who enter the country illegally after failing to apply for asylum in a third nation—such as Mexico—on their route to the United States are presumed to be ineligible for asylum.
Asylum seekers are not screened for when migrants arrive at a port of entry with a CBP One appointment; instead, they are subject to public safety and national security checks. Rather, they are issued a notice to appear in immigration court, where they can subsequently request asylum, and processed under the humanitarian parole authority, which permits them to work. The decisions in those cases usually come after years.
According to the documents, the main nations of origin for people admitted to the United States under the program are Venezuela, Mexico, Haiti, Cuba, Honduras, El Salvador, El Salvador, Colombia, Chile, and Guatemala.
