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Great Reset

Government Admission: Biden Parole Flights Create Security ‘Vulnerabilities’ at U.S. Airports Government Admission: Biden Parole Flights Create Security ‘Vulnerabilities’ at U.S. Airports

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From the Center for Immigration Studies

DHS still refusing to say which airports are receiving inadmissible aliens from abroad

Thanks to an ongoing Center for Immigration Studies Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, the public now knows that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has approved secretive flights that last year alone ferried hundreds of thousands of inadmissible aliens from foreign airports into some 43 American ones over the past year, all pre-approved on a cell phone app. (See links to prior CIS reports at the end of this post.) The Biden administration’s legally dubious program to fly inadmissible aliens over the border and directly to U.S. airports has allegedly created law enforcement vulnerabilities too grave to release publicly.

But while large immigrant-receiving cities and media lay blame for the influx on Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s busing program, CBP has withheld from the Center – and apparently will not disclose – the names of the 43 U.S. airports that have received 320,000 inadmissible aliens from January through December 2023, nor the foreign airports from which they departed. The agency’s lawyers have cited a general “law enforcement exception” without elaborating – until recently – on how releasing airport locations would harm public safety beyond citing “the sensitivity of the information.”

Now, though, CIS’s litigation has yielded a novel and newsworthy answer from the government: The public can’t know the receiving airports because those hundreds of thousands of CBP-authorized arrivals have created such “operational vulnerabilities” at airports that “bad actors” could undermine law enforcement efforts to “secure the United States border” if they knew the volume of CBP One traffic processed at each port of entry.

In short, the Biden administration’s legally dubious program to fly inadmissible aliens over the border and directly to U.S. airports has allegedly created law enforcement vulnerabilities too grave to release publicly, lest “bad actors” take advantage of them to inflict harm on public safety. Or, more specifically, here’s how CBP’s lawyers, in email communications with CIS and summarized in a CIS Joint Status Filing, characterized FOIA’s law enforcement exception (b)(7)(E) in explaining their refusal to release just the domestic U.S. airport locations:

Exception (b)(7)(E) has been applied to the identifying information for air ports of entry, which, if disclosed would reveal information about the relative number of individuals arriving, and thus resources expended at particular airports which would, either standing alone or combined with other information, reveal operational vulnerabilities that could be exploited by bad actors altering their patterns of conduct, adopting new methods of operation, and taking other countermeasures, thereby undermining CBP’s law enforcement efforts to secure the United States borders.

The agency’s attorneys floated a similar argument for withholding the locations of foreign departure airports, adding only that “bad actors” abroad who found out about the “resources expended toward travelers arriving from particular airports” could “extrapolate” from the numbers leaving foreign airports to identify the receiving U.S. airports and then undermine law enforcement’s ability to secure the border (which includes international airports).

The program at the center of the FOIA litigation is perhaps the most enigmatic and least-known of the Biden administration’s uses of the CBP One cell phone scheduling app, even though it is responsible for almost invisibly importing by air 320,000 aliens with no legal right to enter the United States since it got underway in late 2022. It remains part of the administration’s “lawful pathways” strategy, with its stated purpose being to reduce the number of illegal border entries between ports of entry. The countries whose citizens are eligible are Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, and Ecuador.

Under these legally dubious parole programs, aliens who cannot legally enter the country use the CBP One app to apply for travel authorization and temporary humanitarian release from those airports. The parole program allows for two-year periods of legal status during which adults are eligible for work authorization.

The government characterizes these programs as “family reunification programs”.

While seven of the nationalities, excluding Venezuelans and Nicaraguans, can claim eligibility under older family reunification parole programs, all can also just fly in if they can show they have a non-family financial sponsor (which can even be “an organization, business, or other entity”) and meet other requirements, such as owning a valid passport and passing security checks based on biometric information provided through CBP One.

Upon receiving authorization from Washington, they buy air passage to U.S. international airports where CBP personnel process them for release in short order. All are said to be responsible for paying for their own airfare.

They and inadmissible aliens from many dozens of other countries also get this parole benefit at eight U.S.-Mexico land ports of entry. That separate parole program has brought in another 420,000 immigrants from nearly 100 nations from May 2021 through December 2023, according to CIS lawsuit data updated through December 2023. (See links to the 2023 report below, which reflects data through August)

For most of the past year, big-city mayors and state governors have loudly complained about the hundreds of thousands of foreigners showing up in need of housing, food, medical treatment, clothing, and education, placing extraordinary unfunded financial burdens on local populations. Routinely, politicians and major media outlets have laid blame for the influx on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s busing program.

But the airport location information would undoubtedly provide a more accurate and complete picture of what is happening, though the administration would not be able to blame the Texas governor for these arrivals.

The redacted records received by CIS show a clear preference for some airports over others, with a dozen unnamed facilities receiving most of the 320,000.

Release by the government of the airport data would serve an important public interest in that it would provide voters and public officials with information to pressure the Biden government to reduce monthly arrival rates into their cities and states.

Colin M. Farnsworth, CIS’s Chief FOIA Counsel, said the Center rejects the government’s explanation about bad actors exploiting “operational vulnerabilities” at airports on grounds that CBP pre-screens and pre-schedules the arrival of CBP One applicants at each port of entry. He said CIS will litigate for a total release of the airport information.

Bad actors already have access to airport travel volumes, through CBP’s own “Traveler and Conveyance Statistics website.” Its statistics for cities whose travails with migrant arrivals are well-publicized show striking airport arrival increases from FY 2022, before the airlift program, through 2023.

Boston airports, for instance, spiked from 2.3 million during FY 2022 to 3.3 million in 2023, the public CBP website shows. Chicago, another migrant hotspot, rose from 6.3 million airport travelers in FY2022 to 7.9 million in 2023. New York City airports spiked from 17.7 million airport arrivals in 2022 to 22.9 million in 2023.

Related reports from Center for Immigration Studies FOIA litigation are based on data provided through August 2023 and the early part of September 2023. CBP has since provided data for all of September, October, November, and December 2023, which are reflected above in this report.

The following are the prior reports reflecting the earlier data:

Culture

DEI programs to promote diversity actually breed hostility in schools, businesses: study

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From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion programs are billed as making society more tolerant, compassionate, and harmonious but actually have the opposite effect, according to a recent study by Rutgers University’s Network Contagion Research Institute

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs are billed as making society more tolerant, compassionate, and harmonious but actually increase hostility in workplace and educational settings, according to a recent study.

The study, by Rutgers University’s Network Contagion Research Institute, focused on “diversity training interventions that emphasize awareness of and opposition to ‘systemic oppression,’” which has “seen widespread adoption across sectors like higher education and healthcare.” It was conducted by exposing 423 Rutgers students to influential DEI training materials authored by far-left activists like Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, then surveying their reactions.

“Across all groupings (race, religion, and caste-based), instead of reducing bias, they engendered a hostile attribution bias,” the researchers found, “amplifying perceptions of prejudicial hostility where none was present, and punitive responses to the imaginary prejudice.”

“This research raises critical questions about how many individuals, as a result of these programs, have experienced undue duress, social ostracization, or even termination of employment,” said the researchers, who called for further research into “the potential for a far broader scope of harm than previously considered.”

“Importantly, the intervention did not produce any measurable change in warmth or coldness towards persons of color,” the report noted. “Educational materials from some of the most well published and well-known DEI scholars not only failed to positively enhance interracial attitudes, they provoked baseless suspicion and encouraged punitive attitudes.”

Kendi dismissed the findings as “pseudoscience” that “will end up in the historic landfill,” and likened it to attempts to give “scientific legitimacy to racist propaganda” for slavery and against civil rights.

But the findings align with widespread beliefs that “woke” efforts to see all aspects of society through identity-based lenses and root out presumed “systemic” bigotry, generations after achieving full equality for both sexes and every race, are more likely to foster division and resentment by keeping old wounds open and attributing prejudiced motivations where none exist.

More than 30 states have introduced legislation eliminating DEI programs from education as part of a broader push against so-called “woke ideology” spearheaded by Republicans such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Conservatives have long criticized DEI and other forms of identity politics for stoking rather than curing division and focusing education toward left-wing political indoctrination at the expense of learning.

Last year, insiders from the University of California-Los Angeles’ (UCLA’s) prestigious David Geffen School of Medicine warned that the school’s diversity fixation had led to a crisis in which more than half of students in various cohorts admitted since 2020 fail standardized tests for basic medical knowledge of subjects ranging from emergency medicine and family medicine to internal medicine and pediatrics.

Political and customer backlashes to such activism has translated to business woes for companies such as DisneyBud Light, and Target. Former President Donald Trump’s defeat in November of outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris for the White House has also been seen by many as further evidence of the general public rejecting woke ideology, signaling to corporations and activists alike the lack of popular receptiveness to such projects.

McDonald’sWalmartJack Daniel’sJohn DeereTractor SupplyLowe’sToyota, and Coors have all dropped “woke” corporate policies over the past several months in response to public pressure.

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Business

McDonald’s the latest corporation to retreat from DEI policies, commits instead to ‘Golden Rule’

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From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

Fast food giant McDonald’s is the latest major corporation to distance itself from “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) policies, reframing its approach to inclusivity around the more universal “Golden Rule.”

The Associated Press reports that the chain plans to abandon specific diversity targets for senior leadership, end a program aimed at diversity training for suppliers, and pause participation in “external surveys,” such as those conducted by the LGBT pressure group Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

“McDonald’s position and our commitment to inclusion is steadfast,” McDonald’s leadership declared in a January 6 open letter. “Since our founding, we’ve prided ourselves on understanding that the foundation of our business is people. As Fred Turner said, ‘We’re a people business, and never forget it.’”

“We are also excited to introduce a new concept: the power of OUR ‘Golden Rule’ – treating everyone with dignity, fairness and respect, always,” it added. “For the last several months, a small team has been working on refining our language to better capture McDonald’s commitment to inclusion.”

McDonald’s cited the “shifting legal landscape” after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that race-based affirmative action was unconstitutional in 2023 as contributing to the changes. Conservative activist Robby Starbuck, who has successfully pressured other companies to reverse woke policies, said he had informed McDonald’s he planned to release a report on them as well.

 

McDonald’s joins WalmartJack Daniel’sJohn DeereTractor SupplyLowe’sToyota, and Coors, all of which have dropped “woke” corporate policies over the past several months in response to public pressure.

In recent years, left-wing activists have used DEI and “environmental, social, & governance” (ESG) standards to encourage major U.S. corporations to take favorable stands on political and cultural issues such as homosexuality, transgenderism, race relations, the environment, and abortion.

Political and customer backlashes to such activism has translated to business woes for companies such as DisneyBud Light, and Target. Former President Donald Trump’s defeat in November outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris for the White House has also been seen by many as further evidence of the general public rejecting woke ideology, further signaling to corporations and activists alike the lack of popular receptiveness to such projects.

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