President Joe Biden wants to assuage his anti-Israel critics by allowing Gazan refugees into the United States. But a new Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General report reveals how he has already failed to track the 77,000 Afghan refugees admitted into the country. It shows his administration is not capable or willing to handle any more refugees.
When the Afghan government fell apart after Biden removed U.S. troops in a rout against the advice of his generals, the administration sought to minimize the killing of American allies by flying out as many Afghan refugees as possible. Some 97,000 were flown to the U.S., and 77,000 were granted humanitarian parole by DHS.
This allowed them to apply for immigration benefits including resettlement assistance and work authorization. Parole status is good for two years as long as the parolee maintains good behavior, gets vaccinated, and reports address changes.
To get benefits, including work benefits, parolees must apply with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. Often, the agency’s background checks find “derogatory information,” and it denies benefits. In theory, “derogatory information” is also grounds for revocation of parole and removal from the U.S.
But USCIS is not a law enforcement agency. It turns “derogatory information” over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is then charged with removing the offending migrant from the country. Unfortunately, the DHS inspector general found that USCIS standards for denying benefits are different from ICE’s standards for deportation. New lenient enforcement standards from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas mean ICE rarely acts against Afghan parolees who violate parole. By executive order they are not a priority of the Biden administration.
The inspector general report noted that of the “egregious public safety” cases referred by USCIS to ICE, a category that includes murder, rape, sexual abuse of a minor, and drug trafficking, ICE took no action against an offending migrant 94% of the time. That is a lot of “egregious public safety” risks roaming the U.S.
Worse, the report found that DHS has no system for tracking parolees when their parole expires. All Afghan refugees admitted to the U.S. were given two-year parole. They can apply to renew their two-year term, but it is not automatic. No one in DHS has taken responsibility for making sure parolees reapply. This means thousands of Afghans admitted to the country legally are becoming illegal immigrants as their parole expires. DHS is doing nothing about it.
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The U.S. has a record number of foreign-born residents already. College campuses are overrun with activists supporting Hamas’s violence against Israel. Military bases are under attack from foreign national infiltration. Now the DHS inspector general says Biden can’t even track existing refugees while he pushes to bring in even more.
The people of Gaza have next to nothing in common with the people of the U.S. They would be much better off and more at home in one of the many Arab nations by which they are already surrounded in the Middle East. The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait all desperately need laborers. Gazans should go there.