In its rush to let as many illegal immigrants into the country as possible, the Biden–Harris administration is not only letting illegal immigrants self-report their identities, but it is also letting them board domestic airplanes without any proof of identification at all.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection estimates at least 10.4 million illegal immigrants have been encountered at the southern border since President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took charge of the White House, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement now reports that of the 7 million illegal immigrants on ICE’s nondetained docket, those roaming the country freely outside of ICE detention, nearly half a million are convicted criminals, with 13,000 convicted of murder and 16,000 convicted of rape.
And now, we can be certain that all of these figures are likely dramatic underestimates, as a new inspector general report has finally confirmed that in violation of federal law, the Department of Homeland Security has not just been releasing undocumented migrants into the country without, well, identification or documentation, but the DHS has also been allowing illegal immigrants to fly domestically without an ID.
DHS is simply accepting “self-reported biological information” that is evidently never verified, according to the latest report from the Office of Inspector General. Meanwhile, American citizens are not allowed on these same flights without valid identification.
“We requested data on the number of noncitizens who did not have identification and were released into the United States from FYs 2021 through 2023,” the DHS OIG reported. “Because immigration officers are not required to document whether a noncitizen presented identification in the databases, the data we obtained may be incomplete. Therefore, neither CBP nor ICE could determine how many of the millions of noncitizens seeking entry in the United States each year entered without identification and whose self-reported biographic information was accepted. CBP and ICE immigration officers we interviewed acknowledged the risks of allowing noncitizens without identification into the country, yet neither CBP nor ICE conducted a comprehensive risk assessment for these noncitizens to assess the level of risk these individuals present and developed corresponding mitigation measures.”
Federal law explicitly bars the entry of any immigrant “who is not in possession of a valid unexpired immigrant visa, reentry permit, border crossing identification card, or other valid entry document required by this chapter, and a valid unexpired passport, or other suitable travel document, or document of identity.”
One of the few exceptions is if asylum officers determine an undocumented immigrant expresses a credible fear of persecution in his or her home country, a loophole that has become a chasm since Biden and Harris reversed Remain in Mexico and instituted a policy of catch-and-release without approving so much as a court date for adjudicating asylum claims. These migrants, the OIG reported, have been released into the country without “identification such as an unexpired visa, unexpired passport, reentry permit, border crossing identification card, or document of identity of nationality.”
These migrants haven’t just been released into border communities such as Eagle Pass. The doctrine of Biden and Harris has been to mandate TSA to let undocumented migrants onto domestic flights without so much as a passport while American citizens, with multiple proofs of identification, have spent 20 years groped, X-rayed, and surveilled by agents who pilfer through everything from passengers’ baby formula to laptops.
The sheer scope of the problem is less absurd and more terrifying.
The year Biden and Harris took office, the U.S. approved protections for some 22,000 foreigners who came to the country and then claimed asylum. The next year, the figure doubled, and the year after that, it rose another 50%. But as of this month, 91% of the half-million asylum cases filed in 2023 are still pending.
Theoretically, even if these still-pending asylum applicants aren’t screened for the veracity of their claims of persecution in their home countries, law enforcement conducts a preliminary inspection to ensure migrants don’t appear in the FBI Terrorist Screening Database and for suspicious behavior and other derogatory information that would appear during a criminal background check. Only then do officers from CBP or ICE issue identifying documents such as Form I-862 and Form I-220A. In fiscal 2022, CBP refused admission to half a million migrants during a secondary inspection triggered by evidence of criminal or derogatory behavior, and another 15,000 migrants were outright arrested.
But as the DHS OIG has repeatedly warned, the problem is that these inspections are sometimes, if not often, based on self-reported information, not passports or legal identification from other countries. These asylum applicants, approved to stay in the country under possibly false identities, are then streamlined onto domestic flights in the most extraordinary of double standards in the post-9/11 era.
If an American citizen misplaces his or her passport or qualifying state identification before a flight, TSA protocol dictates that a passenger must then provide two forms of alternate identification such as a student ID, credit card, birth certificate, Social Security card, utility card, or insurance bill, one of which must feature a photo, address, phone number, Social Security number, or date of birth.
Absent two qualifying forms of alternative IDs, a passenger must undergo the ID certification process. This includes filling out the TSA’s Form 415, an interview with additional questions to confirm one’s identity, and then an enhanced security screening that “likely” includes an extra pat-down, per the TSA’s own admission.
For noncitizens released into the country under the Biden-Harris regime, the DHS instructs TSA agents to use the documents often based on self-reported information to verify “that the individual presenting the document is the same individual previously processed by the DHS,” cross-referencing this information with the National Transportation Vetting Center or the CBP One application.
The NTVC, created during Donald Trump’s presidency, would only validate whether the filled-out TSA Form 415 matches the information the migrant gave law enforcement upon applying for asylum. CBP One uses facial recognition technology “to match the photograph to the biographic and biometric information DHS previously captured and entered when processing the noncitizen for entry into the United States.”
“If a match is found, CBP One returns a photograph of the noncitizen and a green check mark with the first name, last name, date of birth, and A-number of the traveler,” the OIG reported. “If the application cannot confirm a match, CBP One returns a red ‘X.'”
Even if this weren’t referencing entirely self-reported information given by migrants upon entry to the country, this would still prove a mostly useless exercise. While the various algorithms deployed by CBP One can accurately verify whether a migrant’s face matches a single picture taken by DHS, CBP One isn’t testing these photos against a wider database to identify independently whether a migrant’s face appears across federal registries. Even if it did, the DHS’s algorithms, unlike your cellphone’s Face ID or biometric security, still report significant shares of both false positives and false negatives.
The nation is hosting at least 2 million pending asylum applicants who have passed only a rudimentary security screening. The OIG confirmed it could not verify what number of these millions of migrants have been let into the country and cleared to fly on domestic trips on the basis of their self-reported identities and no formal passport or legal verification.
But wait — there is indeed more!
In June, the OIG warned that “USCIS did not always complete timely screenings of more than 400,000 affirmative asylum applicants who filed for asylum between October 2017 and March 2023.”
For reference, those are roughly the fiscal years of 2018 through half of 2023, during which some 1.3 million migrants affirmatively applied for asylum. In other words, nearly a third of all affirmative asylum applicants — that is, those who don’t just claim asylum as a last-ditch defense during deportation proceedings — were not promptly or properly vetted at all. Now, we know an unknown portion of the two-thirds of asylum applicants who technically were vetted were doing so with purely self-reported information.
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While the DHS has spent two decades infringing on the civil liberties and constitutionally guaranteed rights of U.S. citizens, it has unlocked the gate for millions of migrants to enter the country, quite literally undocumented. By the DHS’s estimation, a third of these millions aren’t vetted at all, and another unknown portion of the remaining asylum applicants are cleared for entry on the basis of pinky promises.
Given the nearly 400 terrorist watch list members who have already been apprehended along the southern border, the flagrant failures documented by the OIG are likely only the tip of the iceberg threatening our national security. But as a sheer matter of basic decency, the OIG details a double standard that should offend every card-carrying American: While we are frisked without so much as probable cause, the TSA is legally required to admit migrants without so much as a driver’s license.