Migrants who enter the country via CBP One are not counted by law enforcement agencies as traditional border crossers
Up to one million migrants are expected to have entered the United States under the controversial CPB One program by the time President Joe Biden leaves office, with the figure already nearing 900,000, according to internal Department of Homeland Security data obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
CBP One allows migrants who want to claim asylum in the United States to apply for the program in their home country using a mobile phone application. Those migrants are then given court dates, which are often scheduled years later. The Biden administration broadly expanded the program last year under the belief that it would ease pressure on the southern border.
That decision prompted criticism from Republicans who said CBP One was nothing more than a way to facilitate illegal immigration and mask the true number of individuals entering the country. Migrants who enter the country via CBP One are not counted by law enforcement agencies as traditional border crossers.
But few are aware of the scale of CBP One. Data obtained by the Free Beacon show that more than 880,620 migrants have been processed with the program since Nov. 2, 2023.
The data show a plurality of the migrants, more than 210,000, have come from Venezuela. That’s in addition to 175,000 arrivals from Cuba, 152,000 from Mexico, and 146,000 from Haiti.
More than 453,000 received parole at a foreign airport, meaning those migrants took a flight from another country and were able to freely roam the United States once they landed. Data reveal that migrants have used the CBP One app from six continents.
Biden pledged last year that DHS would only allow roughly 43,000 CBP One appointments a month. That number quickly rose without any public announcement, the Free Beacon reported earlier this year.
DHS officials who spoke with the Free Beacon believe that the program is on pace to hit the million-migrant mark by Biden’s last day. Such a figure in just over a year is staggeringly high compared to previous administrations.
In 2018, for example, law enforcement encountered just under 400,000 migrants at the southern border—less than half the amount the Biden administration has allowed to enter the United States via CBP One. Total migrant encounters recorded by law enforcement have exceeded nine million since Biden took office.
DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was impeached in January over his handling of the border crisis. Among the charges listed in his articles of impeachment was the creation of CBP One, described as “a series of categorical parole programs never authorized by Congress for foreign nationals outside of the United States.”
President-elect Donald Trump is expected to severely curtail or end CBP One. Trump said on the campaign trail that after he takes office, “The border will be sealed. The invasion will be stopped. The migrant flights will end, and Kamala’s app for illegals will be shut down immediately, within 24 hours.”
The chaos on the southern border is considered a primary reason why Trump won his second term, as well as the popular vote—a first for a Republican since 2004. Trump has pledged to undertake the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, although those close to him say law enforcement will first target illegal aliens with criminal backgrounds.
Such a policy has led to criticism from Democrats, although it appears to be popular with the public. A CBS poll released Sunday found that 57 percent of voters approve of Trump “starting [a] program to deport all immigrants in [the] U.S. illegally.”
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