Soon after a new Biden administration and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) program was announced allowing “up to 360,000 Haitians, Cubans, Venezuelans, and Nicaraguans each year” to apply easily for legitimized status before crossing the border, the New York Times and the Homeland Security Department (DHS) celebrated a sharp “decline” in illegal migrant crossings. The Biden administration waved its magic wand, allowed illegals to claim legal status, and voila! The border crisis is solved! Except the number of illegal migrants crossing hasn’t really changed, as I previously warned for PJ Media.
Crossings of Nicaraguan, Cuban, Haitian, and Venezuelan migrants have “plummeted,” the Times boasted in a Jan. 25 piece. The outlet even tried to make the new program for migrants from those four countries sound restrictive, noting multiple times that “advocates” and some Democrats were unhappy with the “restrictions” on “asylum” the program supposedly posed.
The DHS bragged on Jan. 25:
Encounters of Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan non-citizens attempting to cross the southwest border unlawfully has decreased drastically since President Biden announced an expanded parole program for these individuals, putting the month of January on track to see the lowest levels of monthly border encounters since February 2021.
Preliminary numbers from January show that encounters of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans crossing unlawfully between ports of entry at the southwest border declined 97% compared to December. Encounters with individuals from these countries dropped from a 7-day average of 3,367 per day on December 11, to a seven-day average of just 115 on January 24.
This is all sleight-of-hand, what the Center for Immigration Studies’ (CIS) Todd Bensman called an “illusion [that] would impress Harry Houdini.” The New York Times, for instance, took 17 paragraphs to mention that the program works through the mobile app CBP One, but CBP One is the whole crux of the matter.
I reported on Jan. 24 that, through CBP One, up to 360,000 migrants from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Haiti can apply yearly for “humanitarian parole” from outside the United States on CBP One. As the migrants wait, the United Nations (UN), Mexico, and many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) help them to concoct a “plausible” sob story, find the necessary U.S.-resident sponsor, and collect application documents. And magically, as I noted, the DHS and the Times can claim there are “big reductions” in those illegal border crossing numbers, while the crossings continue as constant as ever. In fact, Bensman predicted an increase in illegal migration with the incentive of the CBP One program and its U.S. work permit.
The Times wrote:
Crossings by migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti have plummeted, but Republicans and some Democrats have attacked the new policies. . .On a background call with reporters on Wednesday, administration officials said Republican opposition to the measures suggested that the G.O.P. was not interested in solving problems at the southern border.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas self-righteously called Republican states “incomprehensible” for blocking “highly effective enforcement measures” in the DHS release. Labeling illegal migrants something else because they have an app is not an “enforcement measure.” It’s a Marxist word game.
And how is there any guarantee that CBP One provides any sort of real vetting? After all, tens of thousands of criminals and national security risks poured over the border last year, and an HHS whistleblower told Project Veritas at the end of last year that the Biden administration was knowingly placing migrant children with traffickers. What sort of vetting actually happens with the CBP One program?
But according to the Times, while Mexican officials are very pleased with the CBP One program, migrant “advocates” actually complained about it because the extremely generous CBP One program supposedly raises “barriers” to “asylum” and because illegals without smartphones can’t access CBP One. Apparently, it’s America’s obligation to make it as easy as possible to break America’s laws?
While the new program only recently made its way into the news, thousands have already benefitted from and entered the U.S. under the deceptive “legitimization” of CBP One. The Times said, “Since Jan. 6, about 1,400 Cubans, 280 Haitians, and 44 Nicaraguans have arrived in the United States under the new pathway, according to internal data shared with The New York Times. About 14,700 Venezuelans have come into the country on the parole program since Oct. 18.” And again, how much vetting actually occurred? Americans are struggling right now; the last thing we need is to expend more resources on illegal aliens.
Remember, when the DHS and the Biden White House announce more victories in “reducing” illegal migrant crossings, it’s all a trick to hide the truth.