House Homeland Security subcommittees examine alleged mass abuse of immigration parole

WASHINGTON — The House Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability and its Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement held a joint hearing to examine what lawmakers and some witnesses described as the Biden administration’s ‘‘abuse of immigration parole’’ and to discuss legislative options to limit future use.

At the hearing, Chairman Michael Guest, chairman of the Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement, said the prior administration ‘‘exceedingly expanded existing parole programs’’ and used tools such as the CBP‑1 appointment system to admit large numbers of noncitizens into the interior. Guest said that, according to committee findings, the CBP‑1 process ‘‘was used in a manner never authorized by Congress to create a fast track pathway for parole into the interior of the country’’ and that those appointments resulted in nearly 1,000,000 entries via that channel.

Why it matters: Parole is a limited authority in immigration law that, since changes enacted in 1996, is supposed to be used on a ‘‘case‑by‑case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,’’ witnesses and some members said. Republican members and two expert witnesses argued that the prior…