Some Republicans have criticized Joe Biden for using immigration
parole
more than any US president and allowing a good portion of the undocumented migrants who arrive at the southern border to stay in the country with a temporary permit, which usually includes eligibility for work.
But the Republican criticisms are accompanied by
misleading figures, as T Verifica was able to determine.
The senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, stated on March 18 in a television interview that Biden has granted parole
to
800,000 people and compared that figure with those that, according to him, were seen in the governments of Donald Trump and Barack Obama. .
"Historically, under President Trump,
parole
was used for about 5,000 people a year. That was the level it was all four years of Trump (...) and during the 8 years that Obama was president, Obama used
parole
about 5,000 times a year," Cruz told host Greta Van Susteren on Newsmax.
[Biden did not fly 300,000 undocumented immigrants into the country, as Trump misleadingly said]
"Do you know what Biden's numbers have been, how many people he has allowed on
parole
in this country? It's almost 800,000 a year," Cruz said.
"This invasion is by design, they want this to happen."
The Texas senator's figures have been repeated by other Republican congressmen such as Lindsey Graham, from South Carolina, who, like former President Trump, has described
Biden's use of humanitarian
parole as an "abuse."
Migrants with a CBP One application appointment lined up in Tijuana, Mexico, to request asylum in the United States, on Friday, February 2, 2024.Gregory Bull / AP
And while it is true that Joe Biden has used
parole
much more than any other president in recent US history, the data shows that it
is misleading to say
that it has benefited 800,000 people per year, just as
it is false that the Administrations of Obama and Trump have only granted 5,000 benefits
of this type per year.
Below we explain the keys to this issue, the reality of the figures and where the deception or omission lies.
What is
humanitarian
parole ?
Parole is a legal figure created
by
law in 1952 that allows the president of the United States to authorize the legal entry and stay in the country of immigrants who would otherwise be inadmissible.
Its goal is to provide protection to people "for urgent humanitarian reasons" or "significant public benefit," the determination of which must be "made on a case-by-case basis."
Its use is not new.
Various presidents took action to allow the entry of migrants: from religious minorities from the Soviet Union, Vietnamese refugees, Chilean dissidents, Iranians and Cuban political prisoners in the 1970s, to Haitians, Central American minors, Afghan evacuees and displaced Ukrainians. for the Russian invasion in 2022.
As of July 2023, there were 126 parole orders
issued
since the 1950s, according to an analysis by David J. Bier, a researcher at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC.
How many people have received this benefit during the Biden Administration?
Since Biden took office in January 2021, his Administration has allowed the entry of more than 2 million migrants in total, through different parole programs
,
according to an analysis by
The Washington Post
, with data from the Department of Security. National (DHS).
One of those programs, implemented in January 2023, has allowed up to 30,000 asylum seekers per month to
enter the United States for humanitarian reasons from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela in total
.
Biden established the measure claiming it would decrease the flow of migrants at the southern border.
It has also
allowed the entry of more than 357,000 people
, mostly Haitians, since it was launched.
It was challenged in court by several states with Republican governors, who allege it forces them to spend millions on health care, education and public safety for immigrants.
But it continues to operate after a federal judge in Texas, Drew B. Tipton, ruled in its favor on March 8.
But the figure of 800,000 beneficiaries per year that Cruz uses is not exact.
During fiscal year 2021 when Biden came to power, just over 250,000 people were allowed to enter the country on
parole,
according to analysis by
The
Washington Post
.
It is only from fiscal year 2022 that the figure skyrockets.
[Elon Musk and right-wing influencers falsely accuse Haitian migrants of “cannibalism”]
And what was it like in the Trump and Obama Administrations?
Although the
unemployment
figures in the Biden Administration are much higher than those of his predecessors, it is
false that Donald Trump or Barack Obama had only granted the benefit to 5,000 people a year
, as Ted Cruz stated.
In fact, during its four years, the Trump Administration allowed the entry of more than 250,000 people with
parole,
most of them during 2019
,
according to the analysis of the capital newspaper.
Official data collected by the independent Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) center at Syracuse University shows that at official ports of entry alone, the Trump Administration allowed almost 150,000 migrants to enter the United States during its four years in office. .
This is an average of 37,000 people a year
,
a figure much higher than the 5,000
cited by Republican politicians.
The majority of inadmissible migrants who received
parole
at ports of entry during the Trump Administration were assisted by authorities in the Laredo, Texas, state that Cruz represents in the Senate, according to TRAC data.
[The Republican who criticized Biden's border management cited a 20-year-old sex trafficking case]
The TRAC data also contradicts what Ted Cruz said about the Obama Administration.
At least between fiscal year 2012—the furthest year for which the center has records—and January 2016, when he left the White House, Barack Obama allowed more than 350,000 inadmissible people to enter through official ports, who would otherwise not be eligible. they would have been able to enter the country.
It's unclear where Ted Cruz got the numbers he uses to criticize Biden's immigration decisions.
And although it is true that the Democrat has used the figure of
humanitarian
parole
like no other president of the United States , it is also true that his immediate predecessors made use of said immigration authority to allow the entry and stay of a
much higher
number of people than the
that the Texan senator indicates
.