November 6, 2023 - WASHINGTON – Last  week, Senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and John Cornyn (R-Texas), along with 24 Senate Republican colleagues, introduced legislation to ensure the American people have a full accounting of the number of migrants being released into the United States by the Biden administration. The Southern Border Transparency Act would require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to accurately report how it is handling migrants encountered at the border, along with providing information detailing the migrants’ places of origin. The legislation follows a letter last week in which Grassley raised concerns about federal agencies’ usage of a mobile application to parole thousands of otherwise inadmissible aliens into the U.S. without proper vetting

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)

“Turn on the TV, flip open the newspaper or simply stop to talk to a local law enforcement officer and you’ll hear a similar story: the border is in a state of chaos. Despite the crisis unfolding in front of our very eyes, the Biden administration is hiding the full facts about the border from the American people,” Grassley said. “Our legislation would shed much-needed daylight on border statistics so that Congress and the American people can more fully understand the scale of Biden’s border crisis.”   

“The Biden administration has gone to great lengths to hide record levels of illegal immigration at the southern border, but Americans deserve to know exactly how many migrants are being released into our country,” Cornyn said. “This legislation would shine a bright light on President Biden’s catch-and-release practices and reveal the devastating consequences of this administration’s unlawful actions.”

Background 

The Biden administration’s strategy for handling the influx of migrants at the border has been to funnel them into so-called “parole” programs – release programs that are only intended to be used on a case-by-case basis to allow an individual into the United States on a temporary basis for specific circumstances. Once paroled, migrants are eligible for work authorization in the United States. Currently, there is limited public data available on the total number of people who have been released into the U.S. under these parole programs, whether they are making asylum claims before they are released, what screenings are taking place, or whether these migrants ever depart the United States. 

The Southern Border Transparency Act would require DHS to fully report on how it is handling migrants encountered at the border, including:

• The number of migrants paroled at each Port of Entry (POE) and in each Border Patrol sector;
• The number of migrants apprehended at each POE and in each Border Patrol sector and how many were granted voluntary departure, placed into expedited removal or simply released into the interior;
• The number of petitions for parole received and granted by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS); and
• The total number of migrants paroled into the United States each fiscal year, whether they are granted work authorization and whether they ultimately depart the United States when their parole expires.  
  Source:: Senator Chuck Grassley