Current and former U.S. officials are warning that the Biden administration has begun manipulating border statistics, incentivizing illegal aliens to shift from illegally crossing the southern border to seeking parole and asylum at ports of entry while blinding border agents by restricting their use of surveillance balloons.
Former acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf told the "Just the News, No Noise" television show Tuesday that the net effect of the policy changes will be to create a false portrait to the American people that the border crisis has eased when in fact it has simply shifted tactics,
"They're just simply moving them from the desert or across the river into a port of entry," the former Trump administration official said. "But the result remains the same, which is they are doing nothing to deter this type of behavior. And they continue to incentivize and encourage it."
In the aftermath of American alarm over a Chinese spy balloon that violated U.S. air space, Wolf said he was deeply concerned that the Biden administration last week thwarted Customs and Border Protection agents' ability to track so-called gotaways — illegal aliens who elude border patrol agents — by reducing the use of surveillance balloons known as aerostats.
"They announced last week they are reducing the number of aerostats that the Border Patrol uses, which are big balloons," Wolf explained. "They are another type of balloon, not Chinese, but another type of balloon that they use along that border for domain awareness so that they understand what's going on the border. And they track gotaways with that technology as well.
"So you're also going to see in the next several months the number of gotaways go significantly down, not because there are less of them, but because the department now has less capability to track them."
Several current Homeland officials confirmed to Just the News that both changes implemented by the Biden administration will alter the official illegal immigration statistics without actually slowing the problem.
One of the key changes was an announcement by Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that as many as 30,000 illegal migrants will be allowed to receive "parole" entry at ports of entry while asylum claims are considered. Nearly two dozen states led by Texas have already sued, claiming that policy is illegal under current U.S. immigration law.
Former CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan, who served both Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, said the Biden administration was driving down illegal migration statistics — the number fell by about 100,000 between December and January — "through a perversion and violation of the law."
"This is why we're calling it a shell game," Morgan explained. "Because this administration, Secretary Mayorkas has simply made a deal with migrants from around the world, 171 different countries. They said, 'Look, in exchange for you stopping to illegally enter and file fraudulent claims, we'll let you get on the CBP phone app, make an appointment to come to a port of entry, where we will continue to look the other way as you continue to file fraudulent claims. We will process and continue to release you in the United States.
"They simply shifted the crisis from in between the borders, to the ports of entry."
New polling shows Americans are increasingly souring on Biden's immigration policies, a political problem heading into the 2024 election that the new policies seek to address. Only 28% of Americans surveyed in a Gallup poll this month reported they are satisfied with current immigration levels.
The union representing border patrol agents used the recent Chinese spy balloon episode to deride the Biden administration after it announced the restriction of illegal immigration surveillance balloons. "China watching our border more closely than the Biden Admin," the National Border Patrol Council tweeted.
Wolf said the parole policy change was likely to lower illegal immigration stats by at least 360,000 this year.
"You can show up at the border or show up at a port of entry and be released into the United States," he said. "So the result, unfortunately, is the same, which is hundreds of thousands, millions of folks are being released into the United States under a false asylum claim."
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