Chairman Green Blasts DHS Decision to Resume Unlawful, Fraud Ridden CHNV Mass Parole Program

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark E. Green, MD (R-TN) released the following statement after reports that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has resumed issuing travel authorizations for parolees through its unlawful mass-parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV). Authorizations had been paused after substantial fraud was discovered in the troubled sponsorship process.
"It should come as no surprise that the Biden-Harris administration has rushed to restart its unlawful CHNV mass-parole scheme, despite the clear evidence of fraud permeating the program. The CHNV program, along with the use of the CBP One app at the Southwest border, has helped the president and his border czar play a massive shell game, encouraging otherwise-inadmissible aliens to simply cross at ports of entry instead of between them. My Committee has engaged with the department since this pause was announced, and the results were sobering. Instead of scrapping the clearly flawed program, the department is allowing it to continue without rooting out the fraud or putting adequate safeguards in place to prevent exploitation by sponsors here in the United States. But fundamentally, there would be no fraud to prevent if DHS simply stopped importing 30,000 inadmissible aliens every month in the first place."
Background:

In a recent report, Adam Shaw of Fox News documented how DHS had put a pause on issuing travel authorizations for CHNV parolees, due to massive fraud discovered among those applying to sponsor inadmissible aliens seeking entry. Shaw reported, "The internal report found that forms from those applying for the program included social security numbers, addresses and phone numbers being used hundreds of times in some cases. … 100,948 forms were filled out by 3,218 serial sponsors-those whose number appears on 20 or more forms. It also found that 24 of the 1,000 most used numbers belonged to a dead person. Meanwhile, 100 physical addresses were used between 124 and 739 times on over 19,000 forms."

The Immigration and Nationality Act allows parole to be granted only "on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit." Since the official announcement of the program in January 2023, however, through July 2024, nearly 520,000 inadmissible aliens have arrived at U.S. ports of entry via the CHNV program.

In April 2024, the Committee released documents obtained by subpoenaing DHS that identified over 50 airport locations, including the nation's capital, where inadmissible aliens have been flown into the country and processed by DHS for release. Chairman Green subpoenaed DHS on August 22, 2023 and sent a follow-up letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in September 2023, demanding compliance with the Committee's requests for critical data and information regarding the CHNV parole program. The Committee first requested this information on April 27, 2023.

According to produced documents, as of mid-October 2023, there were 1.6 million inadmissible aliens awaiting travel authorizations through the CHNV program. In the documents, DHS admitted that none of these individuals have a legal basis to enter the country before being paroled through the program, stating, "All individuals paroled into the United States are, by definition, inadmissible, including those paroled under the CHNV Processes."

In June, CIS released new documents regarding the CHNV program, revealing documents that show inadmissible aliens have arrived not just from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, but from more than 70 others worldwide, including Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Great Britain, Hong Kong, St. Lucia, and Sweden. Evidently, many who are making use of the Biden administration's mass-parole program have settled comfortably in other nations and likely have no legitimate grounds for claiming protections within the United States.

In March 2024, a Haitian national who entered the country through the CHNV program, was arrested for aggravated rape of a 15-year-old girl in Rockland, Massachusetts.

###