Elvis Presley may have died in 1977, but somehow he was among the people who applied to sponsor migrant “parolees” under the Biden administration, according to a new government audit that excoriated the Department of Homeland Security for how it handled the now-defunct parole programs.
The Elvis impersonator wasn’t alone. More than 1,400 migrants were admitted to the U.S. despite their sponsors being deemed to be dead in agency files, according to the report by the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm.
One application submitted a photo of journalist Connie Chung as an identity verification, while another used a photo of “NCIS” actor Cote de Pablo. Still another person applied to sponsor a migrant child — even though he had a criminal history that included two child pornography offenses.
The parole programs reviewed by the GAO included one for Ukrainians and another that covered Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. They have since been canceled or suspended, but not before welcoming hundreds of thousands of migrants who lacked a legal visa to enter the U.S.
GAO analysts described a ready-fire-aim approach to the programs, saying the Biden administration rushed to get them up and running and only later focused on the rampant fraud and national security risks among people who had already been let in.
Things got so bad that the Biden administration in the summer of 2024 suspended the program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, though it was tight-lipped about the reasons.
GAO auditors revealed the reason: Customs and Border Protection, the Homeland Security agency that gives final approval for migrants to enter, looked at a sample of cases from Venezuela and found nearly 20% of sponsors were deemed to be public safety or national security threats.
Some were linked to ongoing investigations into drug dealing or money laundering.
DHS had to pause action for 29,000 migrants who had been approved to enter but who hadn’t made it in yet, and ended up canceling 8,100 of those travel permits.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services belatedly made improvements in the last half of 2024 — roughly two years after the major parole programs were launched and only months before the new Trump administration would shut them down.
“These disastrous programs were nothing more than taxpayer-funded chauffeurs for foreign nationals to travel to the United States and take advantage of our immigration system,” said Nadgey Fones, a spokesperson for the House Judiciary Committee, which under GOP control had investigated the parole programs.
“To make matters worse, the Biden-Harris administration knew about allegations of human trafficking in one parole program but created new parole programs anyway,” Ms. Fones said. “President Trump put an end to Democrats’ immigration insanity in January.”
The parole programs were created to try to take pressure off the southern border. Then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas figured if he could siphon the migrants to fly into U.S. airports, it would reduce the unprecedented flow of illegal immigrants overrunning the Border Patrol.
Mr. Mayorkas asked for the migrants to arrange for sponsors in the U.S., who promised to help settle and financially support the migrants so they wouldn’t become a burden.
But GAO investigators said the initial vetting was severely lacking.
For example, under the law parole is only supposed to be used in cases of urgent humanitarian need or significant benefit to the U.S. public. But neither Citizenship and Immigration Services, which vetted sponsors, nor Customs and Border Protection, which gave final approval at airports, actually checked to see if the applicant actually deserved parole, the audit said.
Citizenship and Immigration Services said that wasn’t its job, while Customs and Border Protection said it figured USCIS or some other agency had already done it.
USCIS also admitted to GAO investigators that it didn’t do much to ensure sponsors were actually living up to their commitments to make sure migrants didn’t become burdens on taxpayers.
It did run a public tip line for migrants to report their sponsors, but the agency admitted they got few tips because it wasn’t really in a migrant’s interest to report anything for fear of having their parole revoked.
Besides, GAO said, Citizenship and Immigration Services described the sponsor’s agreement as more of a nudge than a firm commitment. The agency lacked the desire — or means — to force sponsors to actually support the migrants they’d promised to support.
Among the findings:
• When the programs (the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuelan one is usually just called CHNV and the other is U4U, shorthand for Uniting for Ukraine) kicked off, Citizenship and Immigration Services didn’t even have a way to collect information about why someone was applying for parole.
• Fraud investigators identified cases of human traffickers trying to sponsor migrants for parole from Ukraine.
• The report confirmed Washington Times reporting that people were selling sponsorships to migrants for $5,000.
• Once here, parolees were largely left on their own, even if their parole passes expired. GAO said no Homeland Security agency tracked them and, under a Mayorkas directive, they weren’t considered targets for deportation anyway.
GAO said it came across cases in which a previously deported migrant came back as a parolee and authorities allowed them into the U.S. anyway.
DHS blamed “limited bedspace” in its detention facilities.
Citizenship and Immigration Services was run in the Biden administration by Ur Jaddou. She’s now at the Niskanen Center, which didn’t respond to a request for comment for this report.
Homeland Security said in its official reply to the report that it confirmed what Mr. Trump had been saying about the Biden programs before his return to office.
“DHS does not — and will not — sacrifice thorough screening and vetting, or abdicate its statutory responsibility to administer and enforce immigration laws,” said Jeffrey Bobich, director of financial management at the department.
The department agreed with GAO’s suggestion to do better to mitigate fraud in any future programs it creates, but it disagreed with the other suggestions to learn lessons about the parole programs in particular.
Mr. Bobich said they have no intention of recreating the Biden-era programs, so there’s no need to learn any lessons.
“The department believes ending these programs corrects these well-documented issues and plans no further action to apply lessons learned from these supporter-based parole processes to other ongoing operations,” the department said.
GAO included in its study another parole program aimed at immigrants who were approved for a family-based immigrant visa but were waiting for an actual visa to become available. Under the family reunification parole program, they are able to wait in the U.S., rather than have to sit outside the country.
The Biden administration greatly expanded the program.
On Friday the Trump administration ended the program for Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras.
“The desire to reunite families does not overcome the government’s responsibility to prevent fraud and abuse and to uphold national security and public safety,” Citizenship and Immigration Services said.
