Biden admitted 6,300 illegal immigrants with criminal records, national security concerns: DOGE

The Biden administration used its “parole” powers to admit at least 6,300 unauthorized migrants into the U.S. who have criminal records or appeared on the government’s terrorism watch list, the Department of Government Efficiency reported Thursday.

Once here, many of them quickly signed up for taxpayer-funded benefits, DOGE said.

More than 900 of them were collecting Medicaid — including four who were on the terrorism watch list.

Forty-one were collecting unemployment benefits, 22 got student loans and an as-yet undetermined number were collecting food stamps. More than 400 also got tax refunds in 2024, DOGE said.

“Under the Biden administration, it was routine for Border Patrol to admit aliens into the United States with no legal status and minimal screening,” DOGE said on social media. “So far, CBP identified a subset of 6.3k individuals paroled into the United States since 2023 on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center watch list or with criminal records. These paroles have since been terminated with immediate effect.”

Parole became the Biden administration’s workaround to the regular immigration system.

CBP used it to welcome at least 1 million people who lacked a legal visa to enter the U.S. Most were part of the CBP One app or the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela programs.

They were allowed to enter as long as they pre-scheduled their arrivals and, in the case of the CHNV program, arranged for people to promise to support them financially.

The Biden administration justified it as a way of taking pressure off the Border Patrol, because the migrants were coming through border crossings or airports rather than trying to sneak in between crossings.

Critics said that was a distortion of the law, which only allows parole in exceptional cases where there was an urgent humanitarian need or particular benefit to the U.S. Traditionally that had meant things like medical emergencies, or where U.S. authorities wanted someone here to help with a criminal investigation.

Homeland Security had already announced it was terminating the parole status for those who came under CHNV, effective April 24.

But a federal judge in Boston said Thursday that she would put that move on hold.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani announced her plans during a hearing in a lawsuit seeking to stop the program’s cancellation.

She repeatedly questioned the government’s grounds, arguing that people here legally now face an option of “fleeing the country” or staying and “risk losing everything.”

“The nub of the problem here is that the secretary, in cutting short the parole period afforded to these individuals, has to have a reasoned decision,” she said, adding that the explanation for ending the program was “based on an incorrect reading of the law.”

Another touted benefit of parole was that Homeland Security was supposed to be able to do some screening of the new arrivals beforehand. DOGE’s new revelation, though, suggests criminals still got through.

And both the CBP One app and CHNV programs were plagued with fraud.

The Washington Times reported that welfare recipients, criminals and even sex traffickers may have been using the programs to sneak people in. Dead people, gang members and even someone using former first lady Michelle Obama’s passport number were among those who applied to be sponsors.