Of the nearly 400,000 immigrants who have been flown into the United States under the Biden administration’s parole programs, more than 325,000 went to Florida, says a new report, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is calling the action unconstitutional.
“We know the program’s going on. We’re suing over it,” Mr. DeSantis said at an April 3 press conference in Polk City, Florida. “It’s illegal and not constitutional.”
Texas received the second-highest number, 21,964, the report said.
Florida and Texas have received the most parole participants and have also pushed back the most against the Biden administration’s immigration policies.
“The federal government is encouraging illegal immigration and even aiding these individuals to enter the country,“ Bryan Griffin, the governor’s director of communication, said in an April 2 statement. ”They’ve cloaked these secretive flights as a lawful parole program. The state of Florida is fighting back in Court to end this practice and stop the federal government’s illegal immigrant importation efforts.”
The parole program was set in motion for Venezuelans by President Joe Biden in October 2022 and was intended to help ease the number of illegal border crossings by flying people from certain countries directly to the United States. It was expanded in January 2023 to include Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua.
“It’s an illegal operation,” Mr. DeSantis said at the press conference. “They’re bringing people in who don’t have a right to be in this country.”
The governor called it a secret project, saying the federal government does not notify or coordinate with local governments on incoming flights.
“They are not coordinating with [the] state government at all,” he said. “If they throw six people on a commercial flight coming from a foreign country, there’s no acknowledgment at all to state or local authorities.”
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed in an email that more than 386,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans had arrived in the United States via this process through February 2024.
However, it rejected the notion that the CHNV parole process was a secret program and said it allowed certain people from Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua to come to the United States in “a safe, orderly, and lawful way.” They are required to “have a supporter in the United States, undergo and clear robust security vetting, and meet other eligibility criteria.”
Potential supporters of parole seekers have to prove, among other things, in their own vetting process, that they can financially support the individual for the two-year parole period. Once travel authorization is provided, they must acquire the means of travel on their own.
“These processes were built on the success of the process for Venezuelans,” a DHS spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email. “These processes are publicly available online, and DHS has been providing regular updates on their use to the public. These processes are part of the Administration’s strategy to combine expanded lawful pathways with stronger consequences to reduce irregular migration, and have kept hundreds of thousands of people from migrating irregularly.”
According to the report, the federal government did not disclose to the CIS which airports were used for departure and arrival, nor did it clarify where these parole participants’ final destinations within the United States were, citing law enforcement exceptions.
CIS announced it had taken legal action against the administration on the grounds that the government violated the Freedom of Information Act, the report said.
However, the report said the analysis conducted by the CIS used public information from the CBP’s website, filtered by airport officer encounters at each Office of Field Operations with nationals choosing to receive the benefit. Evidence from that analysis shows that 90 percent of these migrants were sent through Florida and Texas.
Multiple large-scale international airports operate within each office’s jurisdiction.
Mr. DeSantis said that he could not verify the numbers published because his state government has not been given any information on this influx.
However, he confirmed that they had not seen as large an increase of undocumented immigrants in Florida communities like what is being seen in New York, California, and Chicago, and suggested that once these people are brought into the country under what he called “this illegal parole program,” they were “migrating to sanctuary jurisdictions.”
Florida’s Lawsuits
Florida’s ongoing fight has featured five cases challenging the legality of the Biden administration’s use of parole to release illegal immigrants into the country.“This is but one of the many examples of how Biden’s egregious and unlawful immigration policies are disproportionately taxing the resources of certain states,“ said Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody in a statement on April 2. ”As with Biden’s other unlawful policies, we will continue to fight the CHNV program in court.”
Florida has won two of those cases in May 2023—one against the federal government and another against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayokas—but they have both been appealed in the 11th Circuit Court and are still pending. In March, Florida joined Texas in a separate case against the DHS, challenging the CHNV program, but they lost in district court and have appealed.
The governor touted during the April 3 press conference that Florida is the only state to have actually won in court on this issue, and said, “We’re going to keep at it until the Constitution is respected.”
In 2022, Mr. DeSantis also ordered the transfer of illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard; lawsuits filed against him for that action were recently dropped.
Florida has also bolstered law enforcement in Southeast Florida to prevent illegal migration from Haiti through the Florida Straits, sent hundreds of its National Guard and other law enforcement agencies to Texas to assist Gov. Greg Abbott in securing the southern border with Mexico, and passed stricter legislation against illegal immigration.
The new laws include requiring employers to use E-Verify when hiring new employees, increasing the penalties for human smuggling and using fake IDs, and prohibiting any county or municipality from funding any person or organization looking to provide ID and documents to illegal immigrants.
“The efforts in Florida are making this state an undesirable destination for anyone in the country illegally,“ Jeremy Redfern, the governor’s press secretary said in a statement on April 2. ”Since taking office, Governor DeSantis has championed the state’s efforts to enact private-sector E-Verify, increase penalties for human trafficking and smuggling, and crack down on illegal aliens who commit crimes.”
Florida also passed SB 1036 in March to increase penalties for crimes committed by an illegal immigrant who had previously been deported. Third-degree felonies will be charged as second-degree felonies, increasing maximum prison time by 10 years. Second-degree felonies will be charged as first-degree felonies, which is a 15-year increase in maximum prison time, and a first-degree felony will be charged as a life felony.
During the press conference, the governor referred to a recent instance where one of the people flown in by the Biden administration was now facing sexual assault charges against a developmentally disabled 14-year-old girl in Massachusetts, saying it “would have been prevented had they just followed the law.”
“We’ve been after them on this parole for a long time,” Mr. DeSantis said. “We’ve actually won in court, and it’s our hope that we’re going to be able to get that shut down.”
