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Many Migrants in Biden’s ‘Humanitarian’ Flights Scheme Coming in from Safe Countries and Vacation Wonderlands

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1 year ago

13 minute read

By Todd Bensman as published June 17, 2024 by the Center for Immigration Studies

In late 2022 and early 2023, President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security launched one of the most unusual humanitarian programs in U.S. immigration history: it unilaterally began authorizing inadmissible Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (thus the shorthand name CHNV Program) and their immediate family members to fly commercially from foreign countries into more than 40 American airports.

The administration has used this legally dubious program to authorize more than 460,000 ostensibly endangered nationals of those four countries to fly directly from undisclosed airports abroad into some 45 U.S. airports from October 2022 through May 2024. They are then released on temporary humanitarian parole of renewable two-year periods with work permits, during which time they are assumed (but not required) to be applying for asylum.

From this massive “rescue” program’s inception, the Biden administration has claimed that its purpose was to provide temporary U.S. sanctuary “for urgent humanitarian reasons” for those facing persecution in their native countries, and thus reduce the incentive to pass through Mexico on “dangerous routes that pose serious risks to migrant’s lives and safety” on their way to illegally cross the U.S. border.

But new information that the Center for Immigration Studies has forced from the government through litigation now reveals that, while all participants are nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, or Venezuela, many are flying to the United States from 73 other nations. (See the list of countries provided by DHS here.)

The departure country list casts serious doubt on whether the Biden administration has used the humanitarian rescue flights program as it was sold to the American public. In fact, the new departure country information shows that many migrants from these four nationalities have been heading to the U.S. from some of the safest, most prosperous nations on Earth, some heralded worldwide as vacation wonderlands. They could not have been suffering urgent humanitarian problems there, nor were they anywhere near dangerous migration trails.

Economic Giants and Vacation Hotspots

CHNV nationals are flying to the U.S. from Iceland and from Fiji and from Greece.

They are flying from the wealthy European Union countries of France and Germany, from Finland and Norway, from the Netherlands and Switzerland, and from Sweden and Italy. They are flying from Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Presumably, many Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans have reached these countries to settle and work.

The government’s list of 77 departure countries shows that, yes, ostensibly rescue-worthy Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans are indeed flying in from their own troubled countries to take their U.S. humanitarian protection, as most observers would presume.

But they are also getting authorizations to fly from beautiful Caribbean vacation hotspots like Barbados, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Martinique, St. Lucia. St. Kitts and Nevis, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

The publicly stated purposes of the CHNV program, also called the Advanced Travel Authorization (ATA) program, are at odds with the reality that many are departing from models of prosperous stability and safety, whose own residents could never possibly qualify for U.S. humanitarian protection, nor would ask for it.

“I would say this data is evidence that the parole program is not being used to help aliens flee to safety but, rather, as a secondary immigration system that has not been authorized by Congress,” said Elizabeth Jacobs, Director of Regulatory Affairs for the Center for Immigration Studies, who served as Senior Advisor in the Office of the Chief Counsel for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

“The Biden administration is likely paroling in aliens who are already ‘firmly resettled’ in safe and orderly countries but are nevertheless benefitting under the guise of urgent humanitarian or significant public benefit reasons,” Jacobs said.

Withholding the true purpose of a major government program in this way is a serious disservice to the American public, she added.

“Congress delegated DHS limited authority to use parole only for urgent humanitarian or significant public benefit reasons,” Jacobs said. “Misleading the public on the administration’s use of parole prevents voters from understanding the real impact of the administration’s policies and may prevent voters from holding the administration accountable for their abuse of the nation’s immigration laws.”

Managing Border Disorder or an Unauthorized Admissions Program?

In addition to humanitarian rescues, the government also cited a “significant public benefit” to the United States for its foreign flights program, that inadmissible aliens authorized to fly over the border into the U.S. would be less likely to illegally cross the southern border, thus lessening the chaos there.

But never disclosed until now is that the Biden DHS is also authorizing untold numbers to depart on U.S.-bound flights from many safe countries so far away from the U.S. border and Latin America that beneficiaries would never need to march the dangerous trails and crowd the U.S. border.

Cubans, Nicaraguans, Haitians, and Venezuelans the U.S. government has cleared for departure are flying in from far-flung prosperous, low crime countries nowhere near the migrant trails of Latin America or the southern border, like South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

Some are departing from Israel. Before the war with Hamas.

They are flying from Australia.

And from the oil-rich states of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

The government is authorizing some number to fly in from African nations like South Africa, Morocco, and Senegal. Were any of these threatening to add their number to the southern border’s congestion?

Even Vietnam is on the departure country list.

Dispersed Around the World

Immigrants from all four nations apparently have dispersed all over the world seeking work and improved lifestyles. Perhaps things weren’t working out so well in adoptive countries when the Biden administration threw them a lifeline in the flights program. Europe is a good example.

For several years now, thousands of Cubans have flocked to illegally cross the European Union’s external borders, claiming asylum while seeking to work just as they have in the United States. Many have entered the Balkan countries through Serbia or Greece, popular illegal immigration portals of late, seeking eventual resettlement in Spain, Germany, France and elsewhere. While Greece has cracked down somewhat with reported pushbacks of illegal immigrants to Turkey, plenty of Cubans have found long-term residence in other European countries like Italy.

Venezuelans made up about 6 percent of all EU asylum applications in 2023, amounting to about 60,000, mostly in Spain. Unlike the Cubans, Venezuelans can fly to Europe visa-free for tourism and probably need not have crossed borders illegally for their asylum claims. Nicaraguans also have been known to head for Europe in increasing numbers since 2018.

While Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans are rarely deported from the safety and social welfare systems of Europe, perhaps some of them saw surer economic or family reunification prospects when the Biden DHS launched its flights program and decided on a lifestyle upgrade by coming to the United States.

“This information suggests that these people are firmly resettled and if they need to seek protection, then they can seek it in the countries they’re living in,” said Andrew Arthur, a Center fellow and former immigration judge. “If they are coming from anyplace other than Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, they’re simply trading up from the third country that they’re coming from. This literally has nothing to do with asylum claims or anything else.”

The Government’s Fight for Secrecy

The CBP public affairs office did not respond to the Center’s emailed questions asking for an explanation about the surprising diversity of those rescued from often safe and prosperous departure nations. The cold shoulder is no surprise.

The obvious Grand Canyon between the administration’s public justifications for its humanitarian flights program and what it is really doing might explain why the Biden government has fought hard in court to keep the list of departure nations under wraps.

For more than a year, CBP has refused to comply with a Center for Immigration Studies Freedom of Information Act request to name them. CBP lawyers were so steadfastly opposed to their release that they forced the Center into a long and tedious lawsuit. The effort has finally produced only the names of departure countries but little else the Center requested, such as the specific departure airports and the numbers of people leaving each for American airports.

Government lawyers gave the list of 77 countries but refused during settlement negotiations with the Center to provide even a list in rank order of departure volume. In the end, the agency would only agree to disclose the 77 countries in alphabetical order.

The administration was equally secretive about which U.S. airports were receiving the immigrants, and has never agreed to release them to date, although the Center was eventually able to divine that most were flying into Florida. (See “The Florida Gateway: Data Shows Most Migrant Flights Landing in Gov. DeSantis’s Sunshine State”.) The House Homeland Security Committee, which obtained the airport locations by subpoena, later released the information.

Colin Farnsworth, the Center’s Chief FOIA Counsel, said the litigation is now settled and no more information will be forthcoming. He explained, “Although the government had no legitimate claims for withholding the foreign airports the participants of the ATA program were flying from, and their respective departure volumes, CIS determined it was in the public’s interest to quickly obtain the list of related foreign countries by settling the lawsuit, instead of allowing the government to extensively delay the release of any records through a lengthy legal process.”

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UN, Gates Foundation push for digital ID across 50 nations by 2028

Published on October 13, 2025

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From LifeSiteNews

By Tim Hinchliffe

With 30 nations enrolled, the UN and Gates Foundation’s digital ID campaign signals accelerating efforts to create a global digital infrastructure that centralizes identity and data.

The 50-in-5 campaign to accelerate digital ID, fast payment systems, and data exchanges in 50 countries by 2028 reaches a 30 country milestone.

Launched in November 2023, the 50-in-5 campaign is a joint effort of the United Nations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and their partners to rollout out at least one component of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) in 50 nations within five years.

DPI is a civic technology stack consisting of three major components: digital ID, fast payment systems, and massive data sharing between public and private entities.

50-in-5 started with 11 first-mover countries, and with the count now at 30 the participating countries include:

Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Dominican Republic, Estonia, Ethiopia, France, Guatemala, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Lesotho, Malawi, Mexico, Moldova, Nigeria, Norway, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Sri Lanka, South Africa, South Sudan, Somalia, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Ukraine, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, and Zambia.

The 50-in-5 campaign celebrated its 30-country milestone during a sideline event at the U.N. General Assembly in New York on September 22.

There, government officials, like Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, praised the work of 50-in-5 while the ministers of digital economy from Nigeria and Togo called for an interoperable digital identity system for the entire African continent.

“Nations want to maintain their own ID databases, but I think we have a unique opportunity to apply strong data exchange system interoperability,” said Tijani.

“I think a digital identity system that can go with you wherever you are going on the African continent would be a fantastic example,” he added.

In March 2025, the Nigerian government published a framework to develop national Digital Public Infrastructure that would leverage digital ID to track and trace “key life events” of every citizen from the cradle to the grave.

“Throughout a citizen’s life, from birth to old age, there are marked moments of significant life events requiring support or service from the government,” the paper begins.

“Some of these services include registration of births, antenatal healthcare, vaccines, school enrollment, scholarships, health insurance for business registrations, filing of taxes, etc.”

These “life events” require every citizen to have a digital ID:

The Federal Government of Nigeria is on a mission to appropriately deploy digital technology to support Nigerians through these significant and profound moments so they can integrate into the state and enjoy the benefits of citizenhood from cradle to old age.

Back at the 50-in-5 milestone event, Togo’s Minister of Digital Economy and Transformation Cina Lawson called for a free, cross-border, interoperable digital ID powered by the Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP).

MOSIP is a Gates-funded platform that “helps govts & other user organizations implement a digital, foundational identity system.”

Said Lawson, “We’ve initiated conversations with our neighbors, namely Benin, to have interoperability of our ID systems, but also Burkina Faso and other countries such as Senegal, because we’re using MOSIP platform, so what we do is that we host meetings of countries that are interested the platform, so that we could see how we [are] operating it and so on.”

“Our ID system, using the MOSIP platform, is really the ID that the majority of the Togolese will have because first of all it’s free, it doesn’t require to show proof of citizenship, and so on, so that is the ID card of the poorest of the Togolese,” she added.

Lawson also spoke at the 50-in-5 launch event in November 2023, where she explained that Togo’s DPI journey began with the arrival of COVID-19.

First, the government set up a digital payments system within 10 days.

“We deployed it, and we were able to pay out 25 percent of all Togolese adults, and we distributed $34 million that the most vulnerable Togolese received directly through their mobile phones,” said Lawson.

Then, came vaccine passports.

“We created a digital COVID certificate. All of a sudden, the fight against the pandemic became really about using digital tools to be more effective,” she added at the time.

To get an idea where DPI is heading, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Myhailo Fedorov gave a pre-recorded speech for the 50-in-5 milestone event, saying that his country was successful in building “the state in a smartphone” via the DIIA app, which had reached 23 million users.

“For every citizen, government should be simple, convenient, nearly invisible, and accessible in just a few clicks,” said Fedorov.

“Today, 23 million people use the DIIA app […] Since the launch of DIIA in 2020, Ukrainians and the state have saved about $4.5 billion to date.”

“This is the combined anti-corruption and economic effect of digitalizing services.”

“For us, it’s powerful proof of DIIA’s efficiency and the real impact of building a digital state,” he added.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Technology Governance Summit on April 7, 2021, Fedorov told the panelists of the “Scaling Up Digital Identity Systems” session, that it was Ukraine’s goal to “enable all life situations with this digital ID.”

“The pandemic has accelerated our progress […] People have no choice but to trust technology,” Fedorov said at the time.

“We have to make a product that is so convenient that a person will be able to disrupt their stereotypes, to break through from their fears, and start using a government-made application,” he added.

The 50-in-5 campaign is a collaboration between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations Development Program, the Digital Public Goods Alliance, the Center for Digital Public Infrastructure, and Co-Develop; with support from GovStack, the Inter-American Development Bank, and UNICEF.

The Center for Digital Public Infrastructure is backed by Co-Develop and Nilekani Philanthropies.

Nandan Nilekani is one of the architects of India’s digital identity system, Aadhaar.

Co-Develop was founded by The Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Nilekani Philanthropies, and the Omidyar Network.

The Omidyar Network is a funder of MOSIP.

The Digital Public Goods Alliance lists both the Gates and Rockefeller foundations in its roadmap showcasing “activities that advance digital public goods,” along with other organizations and several governments.

At last year’s Summit of the Future, 193 nations agreed to the non-binding “Pact for the Future,” which dedicates a section in its annex, the “Global Digital Compact,” to implement DPI in member states.

One year later, the U.K. announced it was going to force Britons into mandatory digital ID schemes under the guise of combatting illegal immigration.

Reprinted with permission from The Sociable.

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Winnipeg Universities Flunk The Free Speech Test

Published on October 12, 2025

By

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Tom Flanagan

Frances Widdowson faced mob hostility for saying unmarked graves have yet to be proven

Dr. Frances Widdowson’s visit to Winnipeg on Sept. 25 and 26 should have been an opportunity for debate. Instead, the city’s universities endorsed a statement that undermines academic freedom.

Widdowson, a political scientist known for questioning official narratives about residential schools, came to meet students who wanted to ask about claims of “unmarked graves.” Those claims, which became national headlines in 2021 after ground-penetrating radar surveys at former school sites, remain unproven because no physical evidence of burials has been found.

For many Canadians, the claims of “unmarked graves” were a shocking revelation, given how widely the story was reported as a settled fact.

That context alone should have been enough to spark discussion. Instead, the University of Manitoba and the University of Winnipeg joined the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs in issuing a statement that should embarrass both schools. At institutions dedicated to study and inquiry, the instinct should be to ask more questions, not to shut them down.

At first, the statement sounded reasonable. It said the universities did not “condone violence or threats to anyone’s safety.” But that did not stop Widdowson from being roughed up by a mob at the University of Winnipeg. It would be refreshing if the universities condemned mob violence with the same urgency they condemned a professor answering questions. Their silence sends its own message about which kind of behaviour is tolerated on campus.

The bigger problem is the statement’s claim that there is a single “truth” about residential schools, known to “survivors,” and that questioning it amounts to “denial.” In reality, 143 residential schools operated with federal support for more than a century. What happened varied widely from place to place and decade to decade.

That is a subject for historical research, grounded in evidence and debate, not pronouncements about capital-T “Truth” issued by communications offices. Canadians deserve to know that history is still being studied, not declared untouchable.

Worse still was the statement’s promise to “press the Government of Canada to enact legislation that makes residential school denialism a crime.” The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs is free to say what it wants. But universities lending their names to a demand that historical inquiry be criminalized is beyond misguided; it is dangerous.

Criminalizing “denialism” would mean that even challenging details of the residential school record could be punishable by law. Canadians should think carefully before accepting laws that turn historical debate into a criminal offence.

The University of Chicago’s widely praised statement on academic freedom puts it well: “the University’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed. It is for the individual members of the University community, not for the University as an institution, to make those judgments for themselves.” That principle should also guide Canadian universities. Academic freedom is not a luxury; it is the foundation of higher education.

Worst of all, these positions were not even issued in the names of presidents or academic leaders. They were issued under “media relations.” Imagine being a serious scholar or scientist at one of these universities and discovering that the media office had taken a political stance on your behalf.

I know how I would feel: undermined as a professional and silenced as a citizen.

Tom Flanagan is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and co-editor of the best-selling book Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools).

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