Former immigration agency officials and experts spoke to reporters this week ahead of an expected parole-in-place executive order from President Biden.
Top immigration experts are hammering the Biden administration over its plan to establish so-called "parole-in-place" qualifications for illegal immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens.
The idea of parole-in-place stemmed from a memo crafted by President Bill Clinton in 1998 and has been used since 2016 to categorize non-citizen immediate family members of U.S. service members.
A forthcoming executive order expanding the construct is expected to shield as many as half a million illegal immigrants from deportation.
Former Acting ICE Director Thomas Homan said the move will cause further damage to the U.S. and lead to an uptick in marriage fraud – as the policy is set to focus on spouses.
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"This administration has done nothing to secure the border – they’re playing a shell game," Homan said. "This is just another enticement… for more illegal aliens to cross the border to take advantage of a giveaway program."
Homan, who served in the Trump administration, previously said he hopes to help establish a "historic deportation program" if the real estate mogul is elected in November.
He told reporters the parole-in-place program will incentivize illegal immigrants to venture across the southern border and simply "hide out" until a program like this comes along to provide them amnesty.
"A record number of migrants are dead, a record number of American citizens are dead, a record number of terrorists have crossed the border. And what's your focus? Let’s get another giveaway program, which is going to entice more people to come. This is nothing but a political ploy," he said.
There are several conditions for qualifying for the program – a key stipulation being that the spouse must have resided in the U.S. for at least 10 years, have a legally valid marriage to a U.S. citizen and must have a clean criminal history.
Joe Edlow, former acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), added that federal estimates of parole-in-place leading to upwards of 500,000 qualifying individuals is, at best, a minimum figure.
"From my perspective, there is absolutely no other amount of amnesty that I would support or accept… there will be no integrity if we continue to allow people to flagrantly flaunt the immigration laws," said Edlow, who also served as chief counsel for USCIS.
"They say 500,000. I think we've seen other estimates up to 1.1 million. But the bottom line is we don't actually know yet what this [policy] is ultimately going to include."
In Edlow's view, the Biden administration essentially has "shut down" immigration enforcement for four years, so the actual figures on how many people will be permitted to remain on U.S. soil via parole-in-place is indeterminate.
Another expert on the issue said that whether parole-in-place allows 500,000 or many more people to come to or stay in the U.S., it essentially creates a 51st state.
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Heritage Foundation President Dr. Kevin Roberts previously served as a college president in Wyoming – the 50th most populous state. He suggested the Biden administration will be essentially adding another collective population between it and 49th-place Vermont.
"[The White House] has articulated and will soon release details of what we think is going to be the largest mass amnesty scheme in American history. That’s not hyperbole. It's true," said Roberts.
"Having lived in Wyoming, adding the population of an entire state on top of more than 10 million illegal aliens who are already here is just more in fundamentally reordering America," he said.
As of the 2020 census, Wyoming had just over 576,000 residents, while Vermont had about 643,000.
The White House and ICE did not respond to requests for comment for purposes of this story.
