Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the Biden administration is attempting to direct attention away from record-high illegal land border crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border by offering a multitude of other avenues to migrants who intend to enter the country.
Bensman said not only has the Biden administration utilized flight programs to fly in nearly 600,000 migrants into U.S. cities; escorted 500,000 migrants over U.S.-Mexico land ports; and scheduled entries through the CBP One mobile phone app program, but also has raised the number of refugees coming from Latin America from 5,000 to 50,000 under its Lawful Pathways rule.
On June 4, the Biden administration announced the following expansion to its Lawful Pathways rule:
As a complement to the Lawful Pathways rule and associated enforcement efforts, the Department of State and DHS have taken significant steps to expand safe and orderly pathways for migrants to enter the United States lawfully.
Those steps include establishing Safe Mobility Offices in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Guatemala to facilitate access to lawful pathways; expanding country-specific and other available processes to seek parole on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit; expanding access to visa programs for seasonal employment; establishing a mechanism for noncitizens to schedule a time and place to present at ports of entry in a safe, orderly, and lawful manner through the CBP One mobile application; and expanding refugee admissions from the Western Hemisphere from 5,000 in Fiscal Year 2021 to up to 50,000 in Fiscal Year 2024.
Bensman pointed out how the administration is “refugee-izing” economic immigrants in Latin America “for the first time in 30 years.”
“They’re refugee-izing economic immigrants in Latin America for the first time in 30 years, handing out tens of thousands of refugee cards and flying them in at taxpayer-backed expense. It’s called the Safe Mobility Offices program,” Bensman explained on Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Bensman said that while the Biden administration touts decreased crossings at the U.S.-Mexico land border, other entries are “way up.”
“So when they tell you that the numbers of illegal crossings at the land border are down, that’s true. But what they’re not telling you is that all these other kinds of entries are way up,” Bensman said.
Bensman noted that the increased accommodations for migrants from Latin America is unusual, given that not many Latin Americans seeked refuge in the U.S. due to ineligibility.
“The number that had always been allowed in Latin America – because Latin America hasn’t had wars and violent political upheavals in 30 years – has been somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe 5,000 a year and they very rarely filling those…We don’t give refugee status to people in Latin America because they’re ineligible. They don’t qualify. There are much higher priority peoples elsewhere in the world but in this case, they raised the limit to 50,000 for Latin America, and they’re filling them off very fast,” Bensman said.
Despite questions surrounding the administration’s “abusive” use of its power to offer excessive refuge to migrants across the world, Bensman such such actions are unlikely to be legally overturned.
However, Bensman did note how multiple states have sued the Biden administration over its authorization for nearly 600,000 migrants to be flown into U.S. cities for resettling purposes, which was recently canceled due to “widespread fraud.”
Despite the administration’s claim of “fraud” for shutting down the program, Bensman said he believes the program was gutted as part of a political play leading up to the November 5 general election.
“They want the numbers out of the cities. They don’t really care about the fraud. They’re just using that to shut this thing down before the election,” Bensman said.
In regards to the presidential election, Bensman predicted that the U.S. would experience another 10-11 million illegal crossings into the U.S. under a potential Kamala Harris presidency.
“We’ve had 10 million, at least maybe 11 million, including known gotaways and all of these different ones – being flown in and walked in over the borders. There’s probably been 10 million in 3.5 years. So I would say maybe at least another 10 million. So we’d have 20 million,” Bensman said.
“People are already coming in by as many as they will let in. There’s almost no limit at all to how many will be let in. Pretty much everybody gets in, and about 10 million have managed to get in. Once a Harris administration takes over, that would send a message to the entire world that it’s just a superhighway wide open,” Bensman added.
Watch the full interview:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Todd Bensman” by Todd Bensman. Background Photo “The Michael Patrick Leahy Show” by The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
