WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Katie Britt (R-AL), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Ted Budd (R-NC), Steve Daines (R-MT), and Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) today introduced a joint resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act to strike down President Biden’s Circumvention of Lawful Pathways rule, which purports to take a hard line on illegal migration, but is in reality riddled with exceptions and funnels migrants into unlawful parole programs that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has set up without Congress’ consent to allow more migrants with weak or non-existent asylum claims to enter the U.S.:

“The Biden administration’s rule is an unserious attempt at resolving the border crisis and is full of loopholes that the cartels will easily exploit to continue moving unlawful migrants into the United States and overwhelm our Border Patrol,” said Sen. Cornyn.“Rather than stop unlawful migration, President Biden is using this rule to funnel the migrants into unlawful parole programs, and this resolution would put an end to this shell game to hide an unprecedented level of illegal immigration.”

Background:

The Biden administration’s Circumvention of Lawful Pathways rule went into effect on the same day the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Title 42 public health order expired on May 11, 2023. This rule funnels migrants into one of three “lawful” pathways, including:

• The administration’s program to grant parole to up to 30,000 Venezuelans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Cubans per month, as well as other parole programs the administration has recently set up or expanded;
• The administration’s “CBP One” mobile app through which migrants can make appointments to enter at land ports of entry, where they may be paroled into the interior and given work authorizations; 
• Seeking asylum at any place or time after having been denied asylum in a third country.

The first two of these three pathways constitute an abuse of the DHS Secretary’s parole authority, which under our immigration law is only to be used on a true case-by-case basis. Furthermore, although the administration is claiming to be tough on migrants who do not chose to pursue the three pathways it has created, in reality this rule is full of loopholes. Illegal migrants and the transnational criminal organizations that take advantage of them will quickly learn to exploit these loopholes and overwhelm our detention facilities as Border Patrol attempts to adjudicate whether migrants fall into one of the numerous exceptions. This rule is not a serious attempt at resolving the crisis on the southern border, and it does nothing to deter migrants from unlawfully migrating to the U.S.