In a significant security lapse that has occurred under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the government failed to track millions of illegal aliens admitted into the United States under a temporary parole because the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agency that processed the migrants failed to provide identifying information to the DHS agency responsible for monitoring them. The unbelievable breach involves Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the 60,000-employee frontline border agency charged with keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the U.S. and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the premier federal law enforcement agency of around 20,000 that preserves national security and public safety by enforcing immigration laws. In a shameful admission ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) reveals that it relies on the “honor system” to ensure parolees in the country illegally report to field offices as directed, according to a scathing federal audit.
The probe was conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, and reveals that from October 2018 through May 2025, CBP granted around 2.4 million illegal aliens humanitarian parole, many with criminal records and over half of them from Mexico, Cuba, and Venezuela. The agency expanded the use of the temporary humanitarian measure to mitigate a huge increase of migrants crossing into the U.S. along the southwest border, which amounted to around 10.4 million during the period examined. A few months into the Biden presidency, CBP authorized agents to parole apprehended migrants on a case-by-case basis under certain conditions, such as limited immigration detention space, which was pervasive. A few years later the Biden administration greatly expanded access to illegal migration with a special mobile application called CBP One that rewarded nearly all applicants—97%—parole, the GAO found. “Once noncitizens are paroled at the southwest border, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is responsible for monitoring them to ensure they adhere to the conditions of their release,” the report states.
In fact, last year DHS and ICE issued guidance that emphasized the importance of ICE reviewing parole cases to determine whether further enforcement action is appropriate. The problem is the immigration enforcement agency does not have the information it needs to readily identify the illegal aliens that CBP paroled at the border. Sounds like a joke, but it is yet another example of government inefficiency, of how individual federal agencies fail to communicate even when national security, and most likely public safety, is at stake. Congressional investigators confirm that ICE ERO “is not conducting its required monitoring of all noncitizens CBP paroled at the southwest border” and that the laughable “honor system” it relies on is clearly not efficient because not all paroled migrants report at least once a year as required. In 2024 alone ICE lost track of a starling 70% of illegal immigrants paroled by CBP and it is not clear what efforts are being made to track them down in communities throughout the U.S.
The good news is that illegal immigration is at a historic low under President Trump and last spring the administration directed DHS to review cases of paroled migrants and terminate the temporary reprieve of approximately 654,000. Tracking them down remains a problem, the GAO found, because the agency that enforces the measure still does not know where the offenders are. “Although DHS and ICE guidance emphasizes the importance of ICE’s monitoring and enforcement efforts for paroled noncitizens, ICE is not well-positioned to carry out these responsibilities because it does not have readily accessible information about noncitizens’ parole status,” the report states. “According to ICE officials, while ICE obtains information from CBP on noncitizens it places in removal proceedings, this information does not include the parole status of noncitizens who should be monitored, including those whose parole was terminated by CBP through the April 2025 notices.” Congressional investigators point out that, while CBP systems have data fields that provide readily accessible information about parole status, officials at ICE’s ERO headquarters maintain its internal systems do not have those specific data fields and therefore the agency has no access to the critical information.
