According to former senior officials who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation, the Biden administration's claims that new immigration programs are successfully reducing southern border numbers are premature and omit crucial information about how immigrants are still entering the country.
The new plan mandates the expulsion of Cubans, Venezuelans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans while also offering those who would otherwise be expelled a legal route into the country, according to a report by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“They’re using parole. Much like the Obama administration did DACA. It’s creating a loophole you can drive a truck through. What security comes from this? He can’t identify any security that comes from this," former Deputy DHS Secretary Ken Cuccinelli told the DCNF.
"He can’t identify any reducing the flow of illegals coming to the country that he won’t admit illegals. Yeah, right. He’s facilitating it. The guy is an official government human trafficker."
The expansion of Title 42, a Trump-era order used to deport some illegal immigrants in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19, to include people from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti was announced by President Joe Biden on January 5.
The plan permits 30,000 immigrants of those nationalities to enter the country using parole authority and to remain there for two years as long as they have a sponsor. It also enables immigrants who would otherwise be deported under Title 42 to use the mobile app CBP One to schedule an appointment at a port of entry and enter the country more quickly.
“These expanded border enforcement measures are working,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement Wednesday. “It is incomprehensible that some states who stand to benefit from these highly effective enforcement measures are seeking to block them and cause more irregular migration at our southern border.”
In a phone interview with the DCNF, former deputy DHS secretary Ken Cuccinelli referred to Mayorkas' assertion as "bullshit."
“Bull****, numbers are not down,” Cuccinelli said. “They’re at record levels. Even if they went down from those record levels in the absence of the previous month record, it’s still the record level.
"They’re literally importing an entire State of the United States of America every couple of months worth of people. We can’t absorb this. And they know that and that tells you that their intent is to undermine what anybody grew up thinking of as America.”
The fiscal year 2022 saw more than 2.3 million migrant encounters, with more than 250,000 of those encounters occurring in December alone, setting a record.
“They’re using parole. Much like the Obama administration did DACA. It’s creating a loophole you can drive a truck through. What security comes from this?
"He can’t identify any security that comes from this. He can’t identify any reducing the flow of illegals coming to the country that he won’t admit illegals. Yeah, right. He’s facilitating it. The guy is an official government human trafficker,” Cuccinelli added.
Clay Thomas, a retired deputy patrol agent and supervisor of the El Paso Station, agreed that Mayorkas hasn't given the whole story about what's going on at the southern border.
“Everything’s not going great,” Thomas said. “This has just been implemented. There’s no metric to determine whether it’s a success or not. In order to determine success on something you have to give it time…a period of time to show a metric of success. I would assume that that would be no less than three to six months to be able to look and see how it’s working to problem solve it.”
