NTL Conservative Blog: US Immigration Repair 12-28-24

By Lora Ries, Director of Heritage’s Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation.

Rising from the Ashes: Principles and Policies for a New American Immigration System

America’s immigration system used to be broken due to lack of enforcement and overly complicated statutory provisions. Now it is a pile of ashes. As it has done with so many other American institutions, the radical Left has intentionally deconstructed our borders and immigration structures in the hope of building a new version of America. The Left’s vision of unlimited “new lawful pathways” as its “reimagined” immigration system is nothing more than an open border welfare state that diminishes jobs, wages, and economic opportunities for citizens. No country can sustain or survive it. From these ashes. however, comes a great opportunity to redesign a new, simpler, fairer, and more manageable immigration system that prioritizes America first and lawful immigrants second.

The radical Left has intentionally deconstructed our borders and immigration structures in the hope of building a new version of America.

What the Left envisions is nothing more than an open border welfare state that diminishes jobs, wages, and economic opportunities for citizens. It is time to design a new, simpler, fairer, and more manageable immigration system that prioritizes America first and legal immigrants second. “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”—Barack Obama, October 30, 2008

Introduction

Before the Biden–Harris Administration, Americans had long lived with a dysfunctional immigration system. Immigrating legally to the U.S. was too complicated, too slow, and too expensive. These factors, along with many foreigners’ knowledge that they would not qualify for admission under our immigration requirements, encouraged millions to bypass our legal immigration process and cross the border illegally, stay past the expiration date of their temporary visas, file fraudulent immigration benefit applications, and remain here for years without consequence. Other promising immigrants went to Canada, Israel, or elsewhere to avoid the U.S. immigration hassle.

Over the decades, the illegal alien population and the immigration benefit application and immigration court case backlogs continued to increase. All the while, the American public continued to differentiate between legal and illegal immigration, supporting the former while opposing—yet accepting some levels of—the latter. When faced with the question of what to do with the millions of illegal aliens already living here, Americans at the same time opposed amnesties while repeating the claim that 11 million illegal aliens could not be deported. The result: just a couple of hundred thousand deportations each year while the remaining, growing population continued to reside here unlawfully and gain greater footholds in the U.S.

Enter the Biden–Harris Administration and with it a fundamental transformation of our immigration system. By changing legal terms; twisting and warping statutory requirements; waiving, ignoring, or refusing to enforce laws; and unconstitutionally creating immigration benefits not authorized by Congress, the Biden–Harris Administration has intentionally erased the line between legal and illegal immigration. We can no longer recognize our immigration “system” because we no longer operate by the rule of law.

What remains cannot and should not be merely reformed. Rather, the Biden–Harris intended deconstruction should be swept aside and replaced with a new, simpler, lawful, orderly, and manageable immigration system that prioritizes Americans first, lawful immigrants second and illegal aliens not at all.

This paper introduces principles and policies for such a new American immigration system in the areas of legal immigration, working in the U.S., illegal immigration, and U.S. citizenship. It also is the first in a series of Heritage Foundation papers that will examine several of these issues in depth.

Before the Biden Administration

For decades, presidential Administrations have said that the American immigration system is “broken,” as millions of foreigners have been permitted to enter or remain in the U.S. illegally and continue to reside here without negative legal consequences. For those who respect the United States’ rule of law and seek to come to America through scores of temporary or permanent legal channels, the process can take several years and, in some scenarios, decades. As an example, in 2019, the State Department was issuing family immigrant (permanent) visas to Mexican unmarried sons and daughters of U.S. citizens whose family visa petitions were filed earlier than August 1997—a 22-year wait.

U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs, Visa Bulletin, Vol. X, No. 36 (December 2019), https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Bulletins/visabulletin_december2019.pdf (accessed August 28, 2024).

Act (INA) 8 U.S. Code Chapter 12—Immigration and Nationality, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/chapter-12 (accessed August 30, 2024). See also Immigration and Nationality Act [Act of June 27, 1952; Chapter 477 of the 82nd Congress; 66 STAT. 163; 8 U.S.C. 1101 et seq.] [As Amended Through P.L. 117–360, Enacted January 5, 2023], https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-1376/pdf/COMPS-1376.pdf (accessed August 29, 2024) is followed by excessive exceptions and waivers, creating work for immigration attorneys whom applicants hire to help them navigate the confusing statutes and administrative regulations that have proliferated explosively over the decades. In addition, the federal government charges fees for certain lawful permanent immigration benefit applications while waiving and exempting millions of fees for other benefit applications, particularly asylum applications.

For a snapshot of what our immigration system has generated over these many years, consider the immigration benefit and enforcement statistics from 2019, the last year before governments restricted international travel in response to COVID-19, thereby skewing 2020 U.S. immigration data:

The estimated number of illegal aliens residing in the U.S. ranged from 11 million to more than 22 million.

Compare Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler, “Estimating the Illegal Immigrant Population Using the Current Population Survey,” Center for Immigration Studies, March 29, 2022, https://cis.org/Report/Estimating-Illegal-Immigrant-Population-Using-Current-Population-Survey (accessed August 28, 2024), with Mohammad Fazel Zarandi, Jonathan S. Feinstein, and Edward H. Kaplan, “The Number of Undocumented Immigrants in the United States: Estimates Based on Demographic Modeling with Data from 1990 to 2016,” PLoS ONE, Vol. 13, No. 9 (2018), article no. 0201193, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0201193&type=printable (accessed August 28, 2024).

Within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered approximately 288,500 inadmissible aliens at the ports of entry and another 859,500 between the ports of entry for a total of more than 1.14 million enforcement actions.

CBP encountered three aliens between ports of entry who were on the Terrorist Screening Data Set (TSDS) Table, “U.S. Border Patrol TSDS Encounters Between Ports of Entry of Non-U.S. Citizens,” in U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, “CBP Enforcement Statistics,” last modified August 16, 2024, https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics (accessed August 28, 2024).

The U.S. Border Patrol apprehended more than 76,000 unaccompanied alien children. DHS’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had an average daily detention population (ADP) of more than 50,000 aliens,U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Fiscal Year 2019 Enforcement and Removal Operations Report, p. 5, https://www.ice.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Document/2019/eroReportFY2019.pdf (accessed August 28, 2024) and ICE deported more than 267,000 aliens.

The Department of Justice immigration courts had a backlog of approximately 1.2 million cases.

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, “Immigration Court Backlog: Historical Backlog (from 1998),” data through July 2024, https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/backlog/ (accessed August 28, 2024).

The number of immigration benefit applications pending at DHS’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) exceeded 5.7 million.

These data do not reflect a well-functioning immigration system for American employers or family visa petitioners, for alien beneficiaries, for U.S. taxpayers, or for federal law enforcement or immigration benefit adjudicators. Before 2020, the U.S. immigration system needed significant reforms if America was to have a lawful, orderly, and manageable system. Yet, as bad as those 2019 statistics were, they pale in comparison to those generated in less than four years by the Biden–Harris Administration’s intentional outright deconstruction of America’s immigration system.

The Biden Administration

During a 2020 presidential primary campaign debate, Joe Biden telegraphed his Administration’s open border and illegal immigration policies, stating that he would “make sure…we immediately surge to the border all those people that are seeking asylum. They deserve to be heard. That’s who we are. We’re a nation that says if you want to flee and you’re fleeing oppression, you should come.”

Karl Salzmann, “Flashback: Biden Tells Migrants to ‘Surge to the Border,’” The Washington Free Beacon, May 10, 2023, https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/flashback-biden-tells-migrants-to-surge-to-the-border/ (accessed August 28, 2024).

Biden then added that he would reverse an order that had been issued by President Donald Trump so that asylum would be available beyond persecution on account of the claimant’s race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group—its traditional definition.

Then, once Biden was sworn in as President, he wasted no time unleashing his open border agenda. On the first day of his Administration, Biden began to violate sections of the INA and halted effective immigration enforcement and anti-fraud measures. His orders included stopping construction of the border wall system, ending enrollments of aliens in the effective anti–asylum fraud “Remain in Mexico” program, ordering that no deportations would occur for the first 100 days of his Administration, and revoking President Trump’s executive order and presidential memorandum ordering the collection of citizenship information during the decennial Census and exclusion of illegal aliens from the Census apportionment of members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Biden directed federal agencies to refer to legal and illegal aliens alike as “noncitizens,” thereby bastardizing legal, statutory language to erase the line between legal and illegal immigration.

Memorandum from Troy A. Miller, Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, to Deputy Commissioner; Chief Operating Officer; All Executive Assistant Commissioners; Chief, U.S. Border Patrol; All Assistant Commissioners; Chief Counsel; Executive Director, Privacy and Diversity Office; Executive Director, Policy Directorate; Executive Director, Planning, Analysis and Requirements Evaluations; Executive Director, Laboratories and Scientific Services; Executive Director, Intergovernmental Public Liaison; Director, Information and Incident Coordination Center; Director, Law Enforcement Officer/Agent Safety and Compliance; Director, Office of the Executive Secretariat; Executive Director, Office of Trade Relations; Chief of Staff; Deputy Chief of Staff; and Deputy Chief of Staff (Policy), “Subject: Updated Terminology for CBP Communications and Materials,” April 19, 2021, https://htv-prod-media.s3.amazonaws.com/files/c1-distribution-memo-updates-to-immigration-terminology-signed-and-dated-9854-1618974536.pdf (accessed August 28, 2024).

His political appointees implemented policies to instruct CBP agents to process most inadmissible aliens they encountered into the U.S. in violation of the immigration statute instead of returning them across the border.Adam Shaw, Bill Melugin, and Griff Jenkins, “Mayorkas Tells Border Patrol Agents That ‘Above 85%’ of Illegal Immigrants Released into US: Sources,” Fox News, January 8, 2024, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mayorkas-tells-border-patrol-agents-illegal-immigrants-released-into-us-sources (accessed August 28, 2024).

The Left and the media referred to all encountered illegal aliens as “asylum seekers” in an attempt to generate American empathy for the masses who were coming to the U.S. Meanwhile, the real consequence of this leftist propaganda was to encourage inadmissible aliens to file fraudulent asylum applications to buy themselves more time to remain in the U.S. and gain work authorization.

Adam Shaw, Bill Melugin, and Griff Jenkins, “Mayorkas Tells Border Patrol Agents That ‘Above 85%’ of Illegal Immigrants Released into US: Sources,” Fox News, January 8, 2024, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mayorkas-tells-border-patrol-agents-illegal-immigrants-released-into-us-sources (accessed August 28, 2024).

Using a 2021 policy memorandum, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas restricted ICE’s ability to execute most of its immigration enforcement functions, limiting investigations, arrests, detentions, prosecutions, and deportations to spies, terrorists, some aggravated felons, and aliens who illegally crossed the border after November 1, 2020.

Memorandum from Alejandro N. Mayorkas, Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, to Tae D. Johnson, Acting Director, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Troy Miller, Acting Commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border Protection; Ur Jaddou, Director, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; Robert Silvers, Under Secretary, Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans; Katherine Culliton-González, Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties; and Lynn Parker Dupree, Chief Privacy Officer, Privacy Office, “Subject: Guidelines for the Enforcement of Civil Immigration Law,” September 30, 2021, https://www.ice.gov/doclib/news/guidelines-civilimmigrationlaw.pdf (accessed August 28, 2024).

Yet, as the data below will show, the Biden Administration has not operated even according to these very limited enforcement priorities. Echoing Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign statement that “we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” Mayorkas bragged in January 2022 that “we have fundamentally changed immigration enforcement. For the first time ever, our policy explicitly states that a non-citizen’s unlawful presence in the United States will not, by itself, be a basis for the initiation of an enforcement action.” He called this “a profound shift away from the prior administration’s indiscriminate enforcement.”

Adam Shaw, “Biden’s First Year: Mayorkas Says Admin Has ‘Fundamentally Changed’ Interior Immigration Enforcement,” Fox News, January 20, 2022, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bidens-first-year-mayorkas-admin-fundamentally-changed-interior-immigration-enforcement (accessed August 28, 2024). In reality, Mayorkas’s policies have been clear violations of federal law.

Violating Immigration Parole. In addition to opening the border and ignoring immigration enforcement statutes, Mayorkas has grossly violated immigration benefit statutes passed by Congress in the INA. The most blatant of these violations has been his use of immigration parole. The INA states that: The Secretary of Homeland Security] may…in his discretion parole into the United States temporarily…only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit any alien applying for admission to the United States, but such parole of such alien shall not be regarded as an admission of the alien and when the purposes of such parole shall, in the opinion of the Secretary, have been served the alien shall forthwith return or be returned to the custody from which he was paroled and thereafter his case shall continue to be dealt with in the same manner as that of any other applicant for admission to the United States.

Congress later added the following statutory language to prevent the abuse of parole to bring refugees into the U.S. more quickly:

The Secretary may not parole into the United States an alien who is a refugee unless the Secretary determines that compelling reasons in the public interest with respect to that particular alien require that the alien be paroled into the United States rather than be admitted as a refugee under section 1157 of this title.

Congress intended that parole would be used very rarely in special circumstances when an alien does not have adequate time to use legal visa and refugee processes—for example, when coming to the U.S. for emergency surgery or to testify in a criminal case. Therefore, Congress logically did not provide work authorization for aliens who receive temporary parole.

Despite this clear statutory text, Mayorkas has repeatedly used mass and categorical parole to allow tens of thousands of inadmissible aliens to bypass our lawful visa and refugee processes each month. He created parole programs for aliens from Afghanistan, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Ukraine, and Venezuela, as well as aliens who have previously been deported.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “Humanitarian or Significant Public Benefit Parole for Individuals Outside the United States,” last reviewed/updated August 19, 2024, https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/humanitarian_parole

(accessed August 28, 2024). and aliens who have resided in the U.S. illegally for at least 10 years and are married to U.S. citizens.

In addition, Mayorkas created a parole program under which any alien can use the CBP Mobile One application to make an appointment at a land or air port of entry where CBP will parole them into the U.S.News release, “DHS Scheduling System for Safe, Orderly and Humane Border Processing Goes Live on CBP One™ App,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security, January 12, 2023, https://www.dhs.gov/news/2023/01/12/dhs-scheduling-system-safe-orderly-and-humane-border-processing-goes-live-cbp-onetm (accessed August 28, 2024). In other words, instead of securing the border, the Biden–Harris Administration created a deceptive shell game by shifting the illegal flow to the ports while pointing at (briefly) falling numbers of aliens crossing the southern border between these ports of entry.

Secretary Mayorkas has also given his mass parolees renewable work authorization for two-year increments without congressional authorization. He propagandizes his bypass of the statutory visa and refugee processes as “expanding lawful pathways” and insists that parole is granted on a “case-by-case basis.” Federal judges, however, have found otherwise. For example, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rebuked DHS’s abuse of parole in its December 2021 decision regarding the Secretary’s termination of the Migrant Protection Protocols. The court held that “deciding to parole aliens en masse is the opposite of case-by-case decision-making” and added that “DHS’s pretended power to parole aliens while ignoring the limitations Congress imposed on the parole power is not nonenforcement; it’s misenforcement, suspension of the INA, or both.”

He has violated Congress’s establishment of jurisdiction over asylum applications by replacing immigration judges, ICE attorneys, and the adversarial process with USCIS asylum officers who process both initial claims and second-stage applications for border crossers. Without cross-examination by ICE attorneys and immigration judges, USCIS asylum officers are more likely to rubber-stamp and grant weak, questionable, and unverified asylum claims.

Substantively, the Administration supports claims of domestic violence, gang activity, general crime, and climate change as grounds for asylum. These claims do not meet the requirements of the law, which are based on persecution because of an alien’s race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. The Left has taken the U.S. far afield from the refugee protection the U.S. committed to providing after World War II. Instead of providing protection from persecution based on a trait that a person cannot or should not have to change, the Left has watered down and abused asylum as just another way to bring more aliens into the U.S. and allow them to remain here.

Tibisay Zea, “How the Asylum System Became the Main Avenue for Mass Migration to the US,” The World, February 12, 2024, https://theworld.org/stories/2024/02/12/how-asylum-system-became-main-avenue-mass-migration-us (accessed August 28, 2024).

Nor is this purposeful destruction of asylum unique to America. Asylum is the preferred tool of globalists who would use mass migration into Western countries to dismantle Western democratic traditions, culture, and civilization.

Biden–Harris Administration Statistics. The results of the Biden–Harris Administration’s open border operations and lawlessness have been record-setting and devastating to America’s sovereignty, security, public safety, and economy. During the 3.5 years that Joe Biden has been in the White House:

Biden–Harris Administration have enabled approximately 10 million inadmissible aliens to enter the U.S., causing the illegal alien population to increase from the pre-Biden level of 11 million–22 million to the current level of 21 million–32 million.

Between the ports of entry, CBP encountered 16, 98, 172, and 106 aliens on the Terrorist Screening Data Set during fiscal year (FY) 2021, FY 2022, FY 2023, and FY 2024, respectively.

CBP encountered 147,975 unaccompanied alien children during FY 2021, 152,880 in FY 2022, 137,992 in FY 2023, and 110,672 in FY 2024, for a total of 534,980 during the Biden–Harris Administration.Table, “FY Comparison by Demographic,” in U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, “Nationwide Encounters,” last modified November 19, 2024, https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/nationwide-encounters (accessed November 26, 2024). Worse, the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for placing unaccompanied children with sponsors, has lost contact with more than 300,000 children.

In FY 2021, ICE’s average daily detention population was more than 19,000. Table, “Average Daily Population of Noncitizens Maintained in Detention Facilities,” in U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Budget Overview, Fiscal Year 2024 Congressional Justification, p. ICE-3, https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2023-03/U.S%20IMMIGRATION%20AND%20CUSTOMS%20ENFORCEMENT_Remediated.pdf (accessed August 29, 2024).

even though ICE was funded to maintain 34,000 detention beds. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE Annual Report Fiscal Year 2021, March 11, 2022, p. 11, https://www.ice.gov/doclib/eoy/iceAnnualReportFY2021.pdf (accessed August 29, 2024). ICE deported just over 59,000 aliens, less than half of whom were deported on or after February 18, 2021, following the Biden–Harris Administration’s policy memorandum limiting ICE’s enforcement actions.

In FY 2022, ICE’s ADP was slightly more than 22,600. Table, “Average Daily Population of Noncitizens Maintained in Detention Facilities,” in U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Budget Overview, Fiscal Year 2024 Congressional Justification, p. ICE-3 and ICE deported over 72,000 aliens.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Budget Overview, Fiscal Year 2024 Congressional Justification, p. ICE-O&S-211.

In FY 2023, the ADP was over 28,000, and deportations numbered more than 142,000. Figure 14, “FY 2018–FY 2023 Average Daily Population by Arresting Agency,” in U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Fiscal Year 2023 ICE Annual Report, December 29, 2023, p. 21, https://www.ice.gov/doclib/eoy/iceAnnualReportFY2023.pdf (accessed September 3, 2024), and Figure 20, “FY 2028–FY 2023 Overall ICE Removals by Fiscal Year,”

In FY 2024, the ADP was approximately 37,000 aliens, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “ICE Detention Data, FY2024,” https://www.ice.gov/doclib/detention/FY24_detentionStats08292024.xlsx (accessed September 3, 2024) and ICE removed more than 248,000 aliens.

The number of cases in the Department of Justice immigration courts backlog has tripled from 1.2 million when Biden came into office to more than 3.7 million as of November 2024. Additionally, it is very expensive to immigrate lawfully to the U.S. This is partly because immigration law is nearly as complicated as the U.S. tax code. Each rule stated in the Immigration and Nationality

The number of immigration benefit applications pending at DHS’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has grown from over 6.3 million cases. Table, “Number of Service-wide Forms by Quarter, Form Status, and Processing Time, Fiscal Year 2021, Quarter 1,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/Quarterly_All_Forms_FY2021Q1.pdf (accessed August 29, 2024) when Biden became President to over 9.2 million through June 2024.

Secretary Mayorkas claims he inherited a “broken asylum system” from the prior Administration. Nolan Rappaport, “Biden Administration Says US Asylum System Is Broken: Here’s How to Fix It,” The Hill, April 6, 2023, https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/3937344-biden-administration-says-us-asylum-system-is-broken-heres-how-to-fix-it/ (accessed August 28, 2024).He has also repeated several past Administrations’ line that our immigration system is “broken” as he tries to justify “expanding lawful pathways” for millions of inadmissible aliens to come to the U.S. while simultaneously severely restricting immigration enforcement. News release, “DHS Announces Proposed Rule and Other Measures to Enhance Security, Streamline Asylum Processing,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security, May 9, 2024, https://www.dhs.gov/news/2024/05/09/dhs-announces-proposed-rule-and-other-measures-enhance-security-streamline-asylum (accessed August 28, 2024).

The truth, however, is that we no longer have an immigration “system.” The Biden–Harris Administration has dismantled each tool used to control the border and increase efficiency in the immigration system, thereby taking a dysfunctional system and burning it down to an unrecognizable pile of ashes made up—in part—of record terrorist threats, serious criminals, fentanyl poisonings, and child trafficking. These devastating results led the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach Secretary Mayorkas for his willful and systemic refusal to comply with and enforce the law and his breach of public trust. H. Res. 863, Impeaching Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security, for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, 118th Cong., introduced November 13, 2023, https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/hres863/BILLS-118hres863rds.pdf (accessed August 28, 2024). He was the first sitting Cabinet member in American history to be impeached.

Facing reelection and very negative polling on border security, Biden signed a June 2024 border proclamation.

President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Proclamation 10733, “Securing the Border,” June 3, 2024, in Federal Register, Vol. 89, No. 111 (June 7, 2024), pp. 48487–48493, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2024-06-07/pdf/2024-12647.pdf (accessed August 28, 2024).

Rather than rescind his earlier open border orders, however, Biden signed a document that permits continued crisis levels of illegal immigration while allowing mass parole and unaccompanied child trafficking to continue. Per the choreographed plan with the radical Left, Biden subsequently announced an unlawful administrative amnesty for aliens who have lived illegally in the U.S. for at least 10 years and are married to U.S. citizens, as well as an easier process for illegal aliens who came to the U.S. as children to receive work visas, “Fact Sheet: President Biden Announces New Actions to Keep Families Together,” The White House, June 18, 2024, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/06/18/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-new-actions-to-keep-families-together/ (accessed August 28, 2024). in direct violation of the INA.

Principles and Policies for a New American Immigration System

America now faces an opportunity to sweep away Biden’s border and immigration ashes and redesign America’s immigration system. To achieve a lawful, orderly, and manageable system that benefits America first, legal immigrants second, and illegal aliens not at all, the new system should be simpler and faster than the dysfunctional, defrauded, confusing, and expensive pre-Biden immigration system. It also should include full and consistent enforcement.

In short, lawful applicants who are eligible for an immigration benefit should have it granted in a timely manner, and those who are not eligible should be denied expeditiously and then promptly depart the U.S. An alien who fails to depart the U.S. promptly should be removed with consequences such as fines, criminal convictions, the inability to return and the possibility of imprisonment if he or she tries to do so.

A lawful and efficient immigration system can succeed only if our borders are secure and immigration laws are consistently and thoroughly enforced. If it is no longer easier, faster, and cheaper to immigrate here illegally, future migrants will change their behavior based on calculations of higher risk and will be deterred from violating immigration laws.

Below are five principles that should be used in creating a new, effective American immigration system, as well as dozens of policies in the specific areas of legal immigration, working in the U.S., illegal immigration, and U.S. citizenship. A forthcoming series of Heritage Foundation papers will provide more in-depth examinations of several of these issues.

Principle 1: As the government of a sovereign nation, our government must uphold the Constitution and rule of law.

1. The U.S. Congress, not the administrative state, should approve who may be lawfully admitted into the U.S. and set the terms of their stay here.

2. Complying with the plain language of the authorizing statute eliminates fraud and abuse.

3. Temporary means temporary.The executive branch should return temporary and permanent visa eligibility to congressional intent.

4. Congress, not the administrative state, should determine whether temporary aliens may work in the U.S.

5. Aliens who violate the terms of their visas should have their visas revoked.Visas issued to students and other aliens who violate local, state, or federal laws or engage in actions that show support for designated terrorist groups should be cancelled immediately, and such individuals should be deported promptly.

6. Transparent information on immigration status is vital among federal and state agencies.The Social Security Administration, Internal Revenue Service, and Department of Homeland Security should share data on the immigration status of individuals as part of their full enforcement of federal law, including against employers who knew or should have known that they hired or employ aliens without work authorization. Federal agencies should also share those data with state and local officials free of charge.

7. Prosecutorial discretion in the immigration removal context should be used very rarely.Congress should make clear that prosecutorial discretion is the very rare exception, not the norm, when enforcing immigration law.

8. Deportation is a critical component of the enforcement needed to maintain a lawful and orderly immigration system.Orders of removal should be executed in a timely manner.

9. U.S. citizenship is the most important immigration benefit the U.S. provides.U.S. citizenship brings exclusive rights and responsibilities. It should not be cheapened or defrauded by allowing non-citizens to be treated as if they were U.S. citizens.

10. The U.S. government should require that to be given U.S. citizenship, a child must have at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen.The U.S. government should end its “birthright citizenship” policy, which is not required by the U.S. Constitution and is not recognized by the vast majority of other nations.

11. Proof of U.S. citizenship should be required to register and to vote in federal, state, and local elections.The Department of Homeland Security should cooperate with state and local elections officials to verify the citizenship status of all registrants and voters.

12. Since only U.S. citizens can vote legally, only the U.S. citizen population should be counted in determining congressional districts and presidential electoral votes. Only U.S. citizens should be used in the apportionment formula after every U.S. Census to determine all congressional, state, and local political redistricting and, in turn, the number of presidential electoral votes given to each state.To accomplish this, a citizenship question should be reinstated on the decennial U.S. Census.

Principle 2: Our immigration system exists to serve the American people.

13. Immigration adjudicators and officials work for the American people, not for aliens or advocacy groups.

14. Most immigrant (permanent) visas should be for employment purposes, be merit-based, and not be used to diminish the wages or employment opportunities of U.S. citizens.

15. Family-based immigration (permanent) categories should be limited to the immediate nuclear family, thereby ending chain migration.

16. The U.S. should not grant lawful permanent residence based on a lottery system.

17. Applicants, not U.S. taxpayers, should pay for adjudication of their applications and case backlog reduction.

18. Just as they may legally favor hiring veterans over other applicants, employers should be legally allowed to favor hiring U.S. citizens over aliens with work authorization documents.

19. Aside from government persecution, victimization and other types of personal or economic problems should not be the basis for an immigration benefit.

20. Assimilating immigrants into American political and civil society, language, history, and culture is critical for America to remain a united country.

Principle 3: Our country must be secure to keep Americans safe.

21. Our borders and interior must be secure, and public safety must be a top priority.

22. Both border security and interior enforcement should be fully resourced for thorough enforcement.

23. Border agents should have expulsion authority during national crises. Congress should provide border agents with authority to expel illegal aliens across the border immediately including (but not limited to) when a border or national crisis, not just a health crisis, occurs.

24. Immigration detention is necessary to protect public safety, prevent flight, and ensure removal if so ordered by an immigration judge.

Backgrounder Border Security

Rising from the Ashes: Principles and Policies for a New American Immigration System

December 3, 2024 32 min read Download Report

Lora Ries, Director Border Security and Immigration Center

Summary

Key Takeaways

The radical Left has intentionally deconstructed our borders and immigration structures in the hope of building a new version of America.

“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” Barack Obama, October 30, 2008

Barack Obama, Remarks in Columbia, Missouri, October 30, 2028, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-columbia-missouri-0 (accessed August 29, 2024).

Introduction

Before the Biden Administration

For those who respect the United States’ rule of law and seek to come to America through scores of temporary or permanent legal channels, the process can take several years and, in some scenarios, decades.

As an example, in 2019, the State Department was issuing family immigrant (permanent) visas to Mexican unmarried sons and daughters of U.S. citizens whose family visa petitions were filed earlier than August 1997—a 22-year wait. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs, Visa Bulletin, Vol. X, No. 36 (December 2019), https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Bulletins/visabulletin_december2019.pdf (accessed August 28, 2024).

Additionally, it is very expensive to immigrate lawfully to the U.S. This is partly because immigration law is nearly as complicated as the U.S. tax code. Each rule stated in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)

8 U.S. Code Chapter 12—Immigration and Nationality, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/chapter-12 (accessed August 30, 2024). See also Immigration and Nationality Act [Act of June 27, 1952; Chapter 477 of the 82nd Congress; 66 STAT. 163; 8 U.S.C. 1101 et seq.] [As Amended Through P.L. 117–360, Enacted January 5, 2023], https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-1376/pdf/COMPS-1376.pdf (accessed August 29, 2024) is followed by excessive exceptions and waivers, creating work for immigration attorneys whom applicants hire to help them navigate the confusing statutes and administrative regulations that have proliferated explosively over the decades. In addition, the federal government charges fees for certain lawful permanent immigration benefit applications while waiving and exempting millions of fees for other benefit applications, particularly asylum applications.

In 2019, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services determined that without changes in its fee waiver policy, it would forgo revenue of approximately $1.5 billion. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Fee Schedule and Changes to Certain Other Immigration Benefit Request Requirements,” Proposed Rule, Federal Register, Vol. 84, No. 220 (November 14, 2019), pp. 62280–62371, esp. p. 62298, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2019-11-14/pdf/2019-24366.pdf (accessed August 28, 2024). The Trump Administration proposed and finalized charging $50 for asylum applications, which previously had received complete fee waivers. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Fee Schedule and Changes to Certain Other Immigration Benefit Request Requirements,” Proposed Rule, Federal Register, Vol. 84, No. 220 (November 14, 2019), pp. 62280–62371, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2019-11-14/pdf/2019-24366.pdf (accessed August 28, 2024), and U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Fee Schedule and Changes to Certain Other Immigration Benefit Request Requirements,” Final Rule, Federal Register, Vol. 85, No. 149 (August 3, 2020), pp. 46788–46929, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2020-08-03/pdf/2020-16389.pdf (accessed August 28, 2024). The Biden Administration returned to charging asylum applicants $0 to file their applications but imposed asylum program fees on unrelated applicants: $300 for small employers who file a petition for a temporary worker and $600 for large employers who file such worker petitions. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Fee Schedule and Changes to Certain Other Immigration Benefit Request Requirements,” Final Rule, Federal Register, Vol. 89, No. 21 (January 31, 2024), pp. 6194–6400, esp. pp. 6195–6196, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2024-01-31/pdf/2024-01427.pdf (accessed August 28, 2024).

In short, it is a slow, frustrating, and expensive hassle to immigrate to the U.S. lawfully. As a result, when it is faster, easier, and cheaper to migrate to America illegally, then that is what some human beings will do—and have done for decades. Others will not come to the U.S. at all to start businesses or incubate new technologies. Instead, they immigrate to other countries that have more functional immigration systems. For a snapshot of what our immigration system has generated over these many years, consider the immigration benefit and enforcement statistics from 2019, the last year before governments restricted international travel in response to COVID-19, thereby skewing 2020 U.S. immigration data:

The estimated number of illegal aliens residing in the U.S. ranged from 11 million to more than 22 million.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, “CBP Enforcement Statistics FY 2019,” last modified May 24, 2024, https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics-fy2019 (accessed August 28, 2024). CBP encountered three aliens between ports of entry who were on the Terrorist Screening Data Set (TSDS). Table, “U.S. Border Patrol TSDS Encounters Between Ports of Entry of Non-U.S. Citizens,” in U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, “CBP Enforcement Statistics,” last modified August 16, 2024, https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics (accessed August 28, 2024).

The U.S. Border Patrol apprehended more than 76,000 unaccompanied alien children. Table, “Total Unaccompanied Alien Children (0–17 Years Old) Apprehensions by Month—FY2019,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Border Patrol, https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/2020-Jan/U.S.%20Border%20Patrol%20Total%20Monthly%20UAC%20Apprehensions%20by%20Sector%20%28FY%202010%20-%20FY%202019%29_0.pdf (accessed August 28, 2024).

DHS’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had an average daily detention population (ADP) of more than 50,000 aliens,⁹

U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Fiscal Year 2019 Enforcement and Removal Operations Report, p. 5, https://www.ice.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Document/2019/eroReportFY2019.pdf (accessed August 28, 2024) and ICE deported more than 267,000 aliens.

Figure 14, “FY 2017–FY 2019 ICE Removals by Arresting Agency,” in ibid., p. 19. The Department of Justice immigration courts had a backlog of approximately 1.2 million cases. Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, “Immigration Court Backlog: Historical Backlog (from 1998),” data through July 2024, https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/backlog/ (accessed August 28, 2024).

The number of immigration benefit applications pending at DHS’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) exceeded 5.7 million. Table, “Number of Service-wide Forms Fiscal Year to Date, by Quarter and Form Status, Fiscal Year 2020,” 1st Quarter, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/data/Quarterly_All_Forms_FY2020Q1.pdf (accessed August 28, 2024).

The Biden Administration

Ibid. See also 8 U.S. Code § 1101(a)(42), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1101 (accessed August 28, 2024).

National Immigration Law Center, “Biden Administration Day One Immigration Actions,” January 2021, https://www.nilc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Biden-Admin-Day-One-Actions-2021.pdf (accessed August 28, 2024); President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Executive Order 13986, “Ensuring a Lawful and Accurate Enumeration and Apportionment Pursuant to the Decennial Census,” January 20, 2021, in Federal Register, Vol. 86, No. 14 (January 25, 2021), pp. 7015–7017, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2021-01-25/pdf/2021-01755.pdf (accessed August 28, 2024).

Violating Immigration Parole. In addition to opening the border and ignoring immigration enforcement statutes, Mayorkas has grossly violated immigration benefit statutes passed by Congress in the INA. The most blatant of these violations has been his use of immigration parole. The INA states that: The Secretary of Homeland Security may…in his discretion parole into the United States temporarily…only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit any alien applying for admission to the United States, but such parole of such alien shall not be regarded as an admission of the alien and when the purposes of such parole shall, in the opinion of the [Secretary], have been served the alien shall forthwith return or be returned to the custody from which he was paroled and thereafter his case shall continue to be dealt with in the same manner as that of any other applicant for admission to the United States. 8 U.S. Code § 1182(d)(5)(A), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1182 (accessed August 28, 2024).

Congress later added the following statutory language to prevent the abuse of parole to bring refugees into the U.S. more quickly:

(accessed August 28, 2024) and aliens who have resided in the U.S. illegally for at least 10 years and are married to U.S. citizens.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Implementation of Keeping Families Together,” Notice of Implementation of the Keeping Families Together Process,” Federal Register, Vol. 89, No. 161 (August 20, 2024), pp. 67459–67490, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2024-08-20/pdf/2024-18725.pdf (accessed August 28, 2024).

(accessed August 28, 2024).

In other words, instead of securing the border, the Biden–Harris Administration created a deceptive shell game by shifting the illegal flow to the ports while pointing at (briefly) falling numbers of aliens crossing the southern border between these ports of entry.

Erin Dwinell, “Biden Administration Is Playing Deceitful Shell Game to Claim Fewer Illegal Border Crossings,” The Daily Signal, January 30, 2023, https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/01/30/administration-is-playing-deceitful-shell-game-to-claim-fewer-illegal-border-crossings/ (accessed August 28, 2024).

Secretary Mayorkas has also given his mass parolees renewable work authorization for two-year increments without congressional authorization. He propagandizes his bypass of the statutory visa and refugee processes as “expanding lawful pathways” and insists that parole is granted on a “case-by-case basis.” Federal judges, however, have found otherwise. For example, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rebuked DHS’s abuse of parole in its December 2021 decision regarding the Secretary’s termination of the Migrant Protection Protocols. The court held that “deciding to parole aliens en masse is the opposite of case-by-case decision-making” and added that “DHS’s pretended power to parole aliens while ignoring the limitations Congress imposed on the parole power…[is] not nonenforcement; it’s misenforcement, suspension of the INA, or both.”

Texas v. Biden, No. 21–10806 (5th Cir. 2021) (emphasis in original).

Rendering Asylum Meaningless. The Biden–Harris Administration has intentionally ruined America’s second most important immigration benefit after U.S. citizenship—asylum. Beyond telling aliens to surge our border and claim asylum, as Biden did during his 2020 primary debate with de facto support from the media, which refer to all illegal aliens as “asylum seekers,” Mayorkas has violated immigration statutes to facilitate asylum fraud both procedurally and substantively. He has violated Congress’s establishment of jurisdiction over asylum applications by replacing immigration judges, ICE attorneys, and the adversarial process with USCIS asylum officers who process both initial claims and second-stage applications for border crossers. Without cross-examination by ICE attorneys and immigration judges, USCIS asylum officers are more likely to rubber-stamp and grant weak, questionable, and unverified asylum claims.

USCIS asylum grants are significantly higher than application denials. As of June 2024, USCIS had denied or referred 2,444 asylum cases and granted 14,426 applications in FY 2024. Table, “Number of Form I-589, Application for Asylum and for Withholding of Removal by Case Completion Outcome, Office, Month (FY2024 Year to Date),” in U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “Immigration and Citizenship Data: Asylum Division Monthly Statistics Report, Fiscal Year 2024,” June 2024, July 23, 2024, https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/immigration-and-citizenship-data (accessed August 29 2024).

See video of program, “Securing Sovereign Borders in an Age of Mass Migration,” The Heritage Foundation, February 14, 2024, https://www.heritage.org/immigration/event/securing-sovereign-borders-age-mass-migration.

CBP has encountered over 10.5 million inadmissible aliens at and between the ports of entry, the vast majority of whom the Administration has released into the U.S. CBP unofficially reports that more than 2 million other aliens are “known gotaways” who evaded the Border Patrol. Using these two numbers plus any “unknown gotaways,” we can estimate that the policies implemented by the Biden–Harris Administration have enabled approximately 10 million inadmissible aliens to enter the U.S., causing the illegal alien population to increase from the pre-Biden level of 11 million–22 million to the current level of 21 million–32 million.

Between the ports of entry, CBP encountered 16, 98, 172, and 106 aliens on the Terrorist Screening Data Set during fiscal year (FY) 2021, FY 2022, FY 2023, and FY 2024, respectively. Table, “U.S. Border Patrol TSDS Encounters Between Ports of Entry of Non-U.S. Citizens,” in U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, “CBP Enforcement Statistics.” https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics (accessed August 29, 2024).

CBP encountered 147,975 unaccompanied alien children during FY 2021, 152,880 in FY 2022, 137,992 in FY 2023, and 110,672 in FY 2024, for a total of 534,980 during the Biden–Harris Administration.

Table, “FY Comparison by Demographic,” in U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, “Nationwide Encounters,” last modified November 19, 2024, https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/nationwide-encounters (accessed November 26, 2024).

Worse, the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for placing unaccompanied children with sponsors, has lost contact with more than 300,000 children. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Inspector General, “Management Alert—ICE Cannot Monitor All Unaccompanied Migrant Children Released from DHS and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Custody,” Final Management Alert OIG-24-46, August 19, 2024, p. 1, https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2024-08/OIG-24-46-Aug24.pdf (accessed November 26, 2024).

In FY 2021, ICE’s average daily detention population was more than 19,000, Table, “Average Daily Population of Noncitizens Maintained in Detention Facilities,” in U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Budget Overview, Fiscal Year 2024 Congressional Justification, p. ICE-3, https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2023-03/U.S%20IMMIGRATION%20AND%20CUSTOMS%20ENFORCEMENT_Remediated.pdf (accessed August 29, 2024). even though ICE was funded to maintain 34,000 detention beds. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE Annual Report Fiscal Year 2021, March 11, 2022, p. 11, https://www.ice.gov/doclib/eoy/iceAnnualReportFY2021.pdf (accessed August 29, 2024).

ICE deported just over 59,000 aliens, less than half of whom were deported on or after February 18, 2021, following the Biden–Harris Administration’s policy memorandum limiting ICE’s enforcement actions.

In FY 2022, ICE’s ADP was slightly more than 22,600, Table, “Average Daily Population of Noncitizens Maintained in Detention Facilities,” in U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Budget Overview, Fiscal Year 2024 Congressional Justification, p. ICE-3. and ICE deported over 72,000 aliens.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Budget Overview, Fiscal Year 2024 Congressional Justification, p. ICE-O&S-211.

In FY 2023, the ADP was over 28,000, and deportations numbered more than 142,000.

Figure 14, “FY 2018–FY 2023 Average Daily Population by Arresting Agency,” in U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Fiscal Year 2023 ICE Annual Report, December 29, 2023, p. 21, https://www.ice.gov/doclib/eoy/iceAnnualReportFY2023.pdf (accessed September 3, 2024), and Figure 20, “FY 2028–FY 2023 Overall ICE Removals by Fiscal Year,” in ibid., p. 26.

In FY 2024, the ADP was approximately 37,000 aliens,

U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “ICE Detention Data, FY2024,” https://www.ice.gov/doclib/detention/FY24_detentionStats08292024.xlsx (accessed September 3, 2024). and ICE removed more than 248,000 aliens.

The number of cases in the Department of Justice immigration courts backlog has tripled from 1.2 million when Biden came into office to more than 3.7 million as of November 2024.

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, “Immigration Court Backlog: Historical Backlog (from 1998).”The number of immigration benefit applications pending at DHS’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has grown from over 6.3 million cases

Table, “Number of Service-wide Forms by Quarter, Form Status, and Processing Time, Fiscal Year 2021, Quarter 1,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/Quarterly_All_Forms_FY2021Q1.pdf (accessed August 29, 2024) when Biden became President to over 9.2 million through June 2024.

Table, “Number of Service-wide Forms by Quarter, Form Status, and Processing Time, April 1, 2024–June 30, 2024,” in U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “Immigration and Citizenship Data: All USCIS Application and Petition Form Types (Fiscal Year 2024, Quarter 3),” August 29, 2024, https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/immigration-and-citizenship-data?page=2 (accessed November 26, 2024).

Secretary Mayorkas claims he inherited a “broken asylum system” from the prior Administration.

Nolan Rappaport, “Biden Administration Says US Asylum System Is Broken: Here’s How to Fix It,” The Hill, April 6, 2023, https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/3937344-biden-administration-says-us-asylum-system-is-broken-heres-how-to-fix-it/ (accessed August 28, 2024).

He has also repeated several past Administrations’ line that our immigration system is “broken” as he tries to justify “expanding lawful pathways” for millions of inadmissible aliens to come to the U.S. while simultaneously severely restricting immigration enforcement.

News release, “DHS Announces Proposed Rule and Other Measures to Enhance Security, Streamline Asylum Processing,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security, May 9, 2024, https://www.dhs.gov/news/2024/05/09/dhs-announces-proposed-rule-and-other-measures-enhance-security-streamline-asylum (accessed August 28, 2024).

H. Res. 863, Impeaching Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security, for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, 118th Cong., introduced November 13, 2023, https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/hres863/BILLS-118hres863rds.pdf (accessed August 28, 2024). He was the first sitting Cabinet member in American history to be impeached.

News release, “Chairman Green on Mayorkas Impeachment: The Senate ‘Has a Responsibility to Conduct a Full Trial, Hear the Evidence, and Render a Verdict,” Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives, April 16, 2024, https://homeland.house.gov/2024/04/16/chairman-green-on-mayorkas-impeachment-the-senate-has-a-responsibility-to-conduct-a-full-trial-hear-the-evidence-and-render-a-verdict/ (accessed August 28, 2024).

Facing reelection and very negative polling on border security, Biden signed a June 2024 border proclamation.

(accessed August 28, 2024). Rather than rescind his earlier open border orders, however, Biden signed a document that permits continued crisis levels of illegal immigration while allowing mass parole and unaccompanied child trafficking to continue. Per the choreographed plan with the radical Left, Biden subsequently announced an unlawful administrative amnesty for aliens who have lived illegally in the U.S. for at least 10 years and are married to U.S. citizens, as well as an easier process for illegal aliens who came to the U.S. as children to receive work visas,

“Fact Sheet: President Biden Announces New Actions to Keep Families Together,” The White House, June 18, 2024, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/06/18/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-new-actions-to-keep-families-together/ (accessed August 28, 2024) in direct violation of the INA.

Principles and Policies for a New American Immigration System

Principle 1: As the government of a sovereign nation, our government must uphold the Constitution and rule of law.

1. The U.S. Congress, not the administrative state, should approve who may be lawfully admitted into the U.S. and set the terms of their stay here.

2. Complying with the plain language of the authorizing statute eliminates fraud and abuse.

3. Temporary means temporary. The executive branch should return temporary and permanent visa eligibility to congressional intent.

4. Congress, not the administrative state, should determine whether temporary aliens may work in the U.S.

5. Aliens who violate the terms of their visas should have their visas revoked. Visas issued to students and other aliens who violate local, state, or federal laws or engage in actions that show support for designated terrorist groups should be cancelled immediately, and such individuals should be deported promptly.

6. Transparent information on immigration status is vital among federal and state agencies. The Social Security Administration, Internal Revenue Service, and Department of Homeland Security should share data on the immigration status of individuals as part of their full enforcement of federal law, including against employers who knew or should have known that they hired or employ aliens without work authorization. Federal agencies should also share those data with state and local officials free of charge.

7. Prosecutorial discretion in the immigration removal context should be used very rarely. Congress should make clear that prosecutorial discretion is the very rare exception, not the norm, when enforcing immigration law.

8. Deportation is a critical component of the enforcement needed to maintain a lawful and orderly immigration system.Orders of removal should be executed in a timely manner.

9. U.S. citizenship is the most important immigration benefit the U.S. provides. U.S. citizenship brings exclusive rights and responsibilities. It should not be cheapened or defrauded by allowing non-citizens to be treated as if they were U.S. citizens.

10. The U.S. government should require that to be given U.S. citizenship, a child must have at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen.

The U.S. government should end its “birthright citizenship” policy, which is not required by the U.S. Constitution and is not recognized by the vast majority of other nations.

11. Proof of U.S. citizenship should be required to register and to vote in federal, state, and local elections.

The Department of Homeland Security should cooperate with state and local elections officials to verify the citizenship status of all registrants and voters.

To accomplish this, a citizenship question should be reinstated on the decennial U.S. Census.

Principle 2: Our immigration system exists to serve the American people.