The Biden administration caught and released roughly 2 million unauthorized immigrants at the southwestern border, setting them free on “parole” — and then ICE lost track of most of them, according to a new report Monday from Congress’ chief investigative agency.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement relied on the “honor system” and hoped the migrants would voluntarily come and check in.
Many of them didn’t bother, the Government Accountability Office said in the audit.
In fact, ICE doesn’t even know how many of the people in its files were released by its sister agency, Customs and Border Protection, GAO said. CBP has that data but doesn’t share it with ICE.
GAO said ICE’s branch of Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) “is not conducting its required monitoring of all noncitizens CBP paroled at the southwest border and placed into removal proceedings.”
“ERO relies on the ’honor system’ to ensure noncitizens report to field offices as directed. However, ERO officials told us that not all paroled noncitizens report as required,” GAO said.
CBP also admitted that it knowingly paroled some migrants with criminal records, though it said they were “nonviolent minor offenses.” Border officials acknowledged other migrants might have still had criminal records in their home countries that CBP didn’t know about.
Parole is supposed to be used on a limited basis as an exception to the regular immigration system. The law says it can be granted in cases of urgent humanitarian need — such as someone needing medical treatment — or significant benefit to the public, which traditionally had been cases where someone was needed to serve as a witness or otherwise help authorities.
Under President Biden, it became a loophole.
Officials at the time suggested the people they were letting in were likely eligible for asylum, and parole was meant to give them a chance to enter the U.S. and make their official asylum claims later.
But GAO said CBP didn’t actually know whether the people it was paroling even had decent asylum claims. The border interview was “streamlined” and didn’t get into that. In many cases CBP officers didn’t even collect sworn statements from the migrants before releasing them, GAO said.
And granting them parole was almost automatic. Some 97% of migrants who used CBP’s One App to pre-schedule their arrivals were granted parole.
In-depth interviews were conducted if CBP had advance notice that a case had been flagged by the National Targeting Center as a national security or safety risk.
While ICE doesn’t know how many parolees it lost track of, GAO offered some rough calculations.
In 2024, it said, more than 612,000 migrants were paroled at the southwest border. But ICE only enrolled 179,000 people in its alternatives to detention program that whole year, and many of those were ICE’s own releases.
That means ICE lost track of at least 70% of migrants paroled.
In its official response to GAO, DHS said it is trying.
“DHS remains committed to ensuring the overall safety, security and well-being of our nation by both securing U.S. borders as well as ensuring paroled noncitizens are adhering to the conditions of their release,” said Jeffrey Bobich, the director of financial management for DHS.
