A new report from the Government Accountability Office found that the Biden administration released nearly 90 percent of migrants encountered at the southern border through parole authority at the height of its catch-and-release policies.
The report details how the Department of Homeland Security under former President Joe Biden and then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas dramatically expanded the use of “humanitarian parole” between early 2021 and Jan. 20, 2025.
According to the GAO, parole authority had previously been used sparingly by presidential administrations before Biden took office.
“Specifically, our analysis showed that OFO and Border Patrol granted relatively few paroles during fiscal years 2019 and 2020,” the report stated.
The watchdog agency found that during 2019 and 2020, parole was granted in roughly 3 percent to 28 percent of southwest border encounters. That changed sharply beginning in the summer of 2021.
“The number of paroles granted increased beginning in the summer of 2021 and peaked in December 2022, when 89 percent of encounters resulted in parole,” the report stated. “Paroles granted declined substantially after December 2022 and again after January 2025.”
The report also raised concerns that the Biden administration’s mass parole program overwhelmed federal immigration enforcement systems and left authorities struggling to track migrants released into the country.
“… without readily accessible information about noncitizens’ parole status, ICE does not have the information it needs to identify and monitor these noncitizens, or to take enforcement action, as appropriate,” the report stated.
Conservatives have argued throughout Biden’s presidency that the administration effectively dismantled immigration enforcement at the southern border by relying heavily on parole authority to release migrants into the interior of the United States.
Some architects of those immigration policies are now pushing Democrats to restore similar programs if the party regains power in Washington.
