Twenty-five Republican governors want to know how many illegal foreign nationals have been flown into their states by a Biden-Harris administration plan they argue is burdening their residents and creating an unsafe environment.
Those being flown in have arrived through more than a dozen parole programs created by U.S. Department of Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The governors only inquired about one: the CHNV parole program, created to fast track previously inadmissible citizens of Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela moving into the country.
According to the latest U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, 530,000 CHNV parolees were released into the country in the past year, in addition to 813,000 foreign nationals processed into the country from all over the world through a CBP One app. Attorneys general from multiple states sued to stop them, arguing they are illegal. The U.S. House impeached Mayorkas for them and other actions they argue created the border crisis.
The 1.3 million inadmissables released into the country are among nearly 14 million illegal border crossers reported since fiscal 2021, the greatest number under any administration in U.S. history.
In a letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the 25 governors described how the CHNV parole program negatively impacted their communities and expressed bewilderment over no communication provided about their “arrival times, duration of residency, legal status, and location.”
The influx and lack of communication “has created considerable confusion and alarm among local officials and the general public. In the absence of direction from DHS, law enforcement and municipal leaders have often been left to rely upon news reports and social media posts to determine size and location of incoming migrant populations in order to assess what impact they may have on already limited government services including local public schools,” they said.
“The apparent dumping of migrants into our cities and small towns with no advance notice has not only sowed mistrust and fear among the public, but it has also placed the migrants themselves at potential of physical harm. After being met with understandable skepticism from the communities in which they are now living, migrants have become fearful to interact with the public. This isolation has created a ripe environment for their exploitation and abuse.”
The governors requested the information they said to best protect illegal foreign nationals who might be targeted for abuse by cartel operatives or are already victims of human smuggling and trafficking, and to protect their citizens.
