Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has announced an investigation into the Biden administration flying close to half a million illegal migrants into the United States, many of whom have disappeared into the U.S. interior, the senator announced Wednesday.
In a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Cruz noted that through the "CHNV" parole program, close to 435,000 improperly vetted migrants were flown directing into U.S. airports and then almost 96% of them were ultimately released into the country. CHNV refers to the countries Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, which are given advanced travel authorization through the Customer and Border Protection’s One app.
Cruz, who is the ranking member on the Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, noted that "between March 2023 and April 2024, at least 300 people bypassed the Transportation Security Administration and gained access to secure airport areas. Some even made it onto a plane."
The formal request cited a quote from FBI Director Christopher Wray in which he recently testified to Congress and told lawmakers that he was "hard pressed to think of a time when so many different threats to our public safety and national security were so elevated at once, but that is the case … today." In June, DHS revealed that an ISIS-affiliated group brought 400 illegal immigrants into the U.S., of which more than 50 have not been found.
Cruz directly blamed the "open border policies" of the Biden administration for "weakening airport security" in various ways. In addition to the large numbers of people moving through the system, Cruz noted the breakdown in the biometric screening process, citing that one of the illegal aliens paroled by DHS "was arrested in Massachusetts for aggravated rape."
The senator from Texas requested multiple documents related to airport security, fraud of the CHNV program, and information on the TSA program to house illegal aliens, among many others. Cruz gave Mayorkas until Sept. 10 to produce all the requested documents.