In addition to overhauling the CBP One app software, turning it into a tool to help illegal aliens self-deport after the previous president used it for scheduling asylum appointments, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently announced that some 532,000 illegal aliens who were allowed to fly directly to the United States under the Biden administration's Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan (CHNV) parole program would be losing their parole status and work authorization.
Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), says the previous administration violated the original intent of the law.
"It can only be done on a case-by-case basis and for certain national security and humanitarian interests, and it has to be temporary – none of which was abided by by the Biden administration," he explains. "A case-by-case basis can't just include 30,000 people a month from four countries simply because they happen to come from a particular four countries."
He is glad to see the Trump administration correcting this problem.
"They're restoring the law to the true sense of what Congress intended to achieve when they passed it back in 1952," Mehlman asserts.
Over the weekend, many media outlets reported that the Trump administration was revoking the "legal status" of aliens paroled into the U.S. through the CHNV program. But as FAIR points out, "parole is not a legal status under immigration law."
The statute authorizing parole (INA Section 212(d)(5)) clearly states that receiving parole does not constitute a legal admission to the U.S. It is merely a legal device that allows the government to allow otherwise inadmissible aliens into the U.S. on a temporary, case-by-case basis for a significant public benefit or urgent humanitarian need.
In addition to Biden's actions being illegal, FAIR last summer exposed the fraud that plagued the CHNV program, leading DHS to quietly pause it at the time.
Now, in its official notice in the Federal Register, DHS says the parole of aliens in the United States under the CHNV programs (if not already expired) will expire in 30 days "unless the Secretary makes an individual determination to the contrary."
It further states that parolees who had not obtained a legal basis to be in the United States, such as a green card or other visa, must depart the United States before their parole expires.
