Lawmaker: CBP One App a ‘Racket’ for Would-Be Illegal Immigrants to Gain Entry

Republicans called the Biden administration’s use of the CBP One phone app a “mass parole scheme” to unlawfully allow hundreds of thousands of would-be illegal immigrants into the country at a March 21 House Homeland Security joint subcommittee hearing.

“Simply put, this application’s users know that a [U.S. Customs and Border Patrol] CBP One appointment is their ticket into the United States,” said Rep. Clay Higgins, (R-Louis.) chair of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement.

CBP One was created to reduce wait times for perishable commercial goods passing through ports of entry for legal trade, he said.

But under Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the application was converted for use by would-be illegal aliens. The Biden administration billed it as an expansion of “legal pathways” for migration into the United States.

Republican committee members blasted the use of the app for allowing illegal immigrants to walk or fly into the country at the government’s invitation. Illegal immigrants could make an appointment with CBP to enter the country beginning in January 2023, Republican committee members said.

The White House praised the app’s usefulness in streamlining migrant processing.

Humanitarian parole, by law, is to be issued on a case-by-case basis; but has become a workaround to the asylum system that some illegal immigrants apply for, but few ultimately qualify. 

Less than 30 percent of illegal immigrants who apply for asylum end up qualifying under the criteria that they fear persecution over race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or social group inclusion. Most illegal immigrants don’t ultimately apply for asylum, and many who do are rejected because they came economic reasons.

The app appears to be aimed at improving the optics, and statistics, of mass illegal immigration between ports of entry.

The White House said the move would help alleviate extreme overcrowding in border facilities and protect illegal immigrants from smugglers.

More than 460,000 illegals have scheduled appointments at ports of entry through the app. Of those who scheduled appointments, 96 percent were released into the U.S., Mr. Higgins said.

Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) compared the convenience of illegal immigrants making an appointment on the app to making a doctor’s appointment.

In 2023. alone, more than 320,000 inadmissible aliens flew into U.S. airports through so-called parole programs using CBP One, said Mr. Bishop, chair of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability.

Those numbers don’t count toward the more than 2.8 million aliens who crossed the border illegally nationwide since January 2023, he said.

“This is an abuse of parol by design,” said Mr. Higgins, adding the policy was a “racket” designed to expedite illegal immigration into America.

Democrats and witnesses from the Biden administration defended the app program as a way to manage mass migration being caused by external forces—not the policies of the Biden administration, which did away with Trump-era measures such as “Remain in Mexico” for asylum seekers.

Rep. Lou Correa, (D-Calif.) ranking member on the Border Subcommittee, suggested that the mass migration to the United States was due to COVID-19 and unstable governments across the world.

“Bottom line, we are witnessing today a worldwide migration movement like we’ve never seen, probably ever. 

“Reasons? We’re emerging from COVID. South of the border, we have economies, the nations that are essentially nonfunctional anymore.” Mr. Correa said.

Adam Hunter, deputy assistant secretary for immigration policy, testified that global trends such as poverty and climate change were also part of the reason for the mass migration.

Mr. Higgins slammed the Biden administration’s lack of transparency in creating “regional processing centers,” also known as “safe mobility offices,” in foreign countries such as Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala, and Costa Rica to pre-process illegal immigrants.

“Under this new system, the entire world has become the sovereign American border by the interpretation of the Biden administration,” he said.

Diane Sabatino, acting executive assistant commissioner of the CBP’s Office of Field Operations, said the app was helpful because it streamlined the screening of migrants against crime and terrorist databases.

“Non-citizens may apply for advanced travel authorization from CBP through an automated process and will undergo biometric and biographic screening,” Ms. Sabatino told committee members.

“The app streamlines this process by performing multiple systems checks, freeing officers from time-consuming manual data entry, and allows officers to focus on their important vetting activities as well as other mission priorities at ports of entry,” she said.

But some committee members questioned how any meaningful vetting could occur when the whole system has been swamped with more than 9 million illegal border encounters under the Biden administration.

Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.), ranking member of the Oversight Subcommittee, said the bipartisan Senate bill on immigration had the potential to fix the immigration crisis and hoped it might be revived to deal with the crisis.

“We could have amendments and debates and the like,” he said. “And, you know, if we had to add something or to take something, that’s fine, but let’s try and find a bipartisan solution to this issue.”

But Republicans blocked the bill for allowing too many migrants into the country on a daily basis and claimed it only added more border patrol agents to process illegal migrants more quickly into the government instead of curtailing illegal immigration.

The central sticking point of the bill allowed officials to shut down migrant entries into the U.S. at the southern border, but only when there was a rolling seven-day average of 5,000 encounters a day or 8,500 encounters in a single day.

Meanwhile, Congress, on March 22, grappled with a $1.2 trillion budget package to avert a government shutdown that would bolster border personnel and funding.

That package included border security funding, such as $61.8 billion for DHS, a $1.1 billion increase over the 2023 fiscal year. CBP would receive $400 million to combat fentanyl trafficking, which is controlled by cartels at the U.S. southern border.

The budget earmarks $2.2 billion to process asylum seekers and related purposes.

Under the proposal, DHS will have 24 percent more beds in detention centers for illegal immigrants, after years of cutting back on bed space, and an additional 22,000 Border Patrol agents 

Jackson Richman contributed to this report.