OPINION:
Once upon a time, America’s press corps acted as an unofficial fourth branch of government, shining light into dark crevices that politicians and bureaucrats wanted to keep unilluminated. However, today’s corporate media appear to have abandoned their quest for the truth in favor of pushing the purely ideological narrative that President Trump is a lawless tyrant. Nowhere is that more evident than in reporting on the bevy of spurious lawsuits filed against Mr. Trump’s immigration policies.
In April, before the Supreme Court suspended her order Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani issued a temporary stay barring the Trump administration from ending President Biden’s Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela parole program. Newsweek and other corporate news platforms characterized the judge’s order as a “legal loss” for the Trump administration. However, that is a deliberate mischaracterization of what happened.
Immigration parole is a legal fiction that deems an alien to be at the border, requesting admission, even though he or she has been permitted to enter the United States physically. It exists for the convenience of the U.S. government, not as a tool for aliens to sidestep immigration laws.
The statute delegating parole authority to the executive branch is very specific: 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(5) vests the secretary of homeland security discretionary power to “parole into the United States temporarily under such conditions as he may prescribe only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit any alien applying for admission to the United States.”
The CHNV parole program failed to meet any of those requirements. By definition, programs that provide a blanket grant of parole to any alien who meets a defined set of characteristics do not comply with the “case-by-case basis standard” set forth in the parole statute. Moreover, most of the people who fell under the CHNV program weren’t “applicants for admission to the United States.” Rather, they were entrants without inspection encountered after entering the United States at an unauthorized time and/or place, in violation of 8 U.S.C. 1325. In short, the CHNV program was unlawful.
As such, the Trump administration is entirely justified in terminating it.
Nevertheless, in a blatant instance of judicial activism, Judge Talwani insists that before ending the CHNV program, the Trump administration must observe the same “case-by-case” standard that Mr. Biden so cavalierly ignored when creating it. If Judge Talwani gets her way, the federal government will be required to conduct an individual hearing for each of the 530,000 people who improperly received parole under the lawless CHNV scheme and demonstrate that each one no longer qualifies for parole.
That is not sound legal reasoning. It is simply an attempt to flip the script and put aliens in control of when, how and for how long they get parole. Nothing in 8 U.S.C. 1182(d)(5) requires the government to meet any specific standard before canceling an alien’s parole.
Parole is an entirely discretionary measure that Uncle Sam may confer and revoke at his discretion. No alien is entitled to parole as a matter of law, and the government has the clear, unequivocal authority to terminate parole at any time, for any reason.
According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “[Parole] may be terminated upon written notice to the alien if [the government] determines the purpose for which the parole was authorized has been accomplished or if [the government] determines that neither humanitarian reasons nor public benefit warrant the continued presence of the parolee in the United States.”
In fact, the only time a parole revocation hearing becomes necessary is when an alien demonstrates a credible fear of persecution or torture if returned to his or her home country. Of course, the Biden administration knew that 99% of the Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who unlawfully entered the U.S. under its watch didn’t have a snowball’s chance in Miami of qualifying for asylum or other humanitarian protections.
That is exactly why Team Biden engaged in an unlawful use of the parole authority to enable them to stay in the U.S. rather than processing them for asylum, withholding of removal or relief under the U.N. Convention Against Torture.
Of course, you will never read about any of that in any corporate media outlet. The truth doesn’t fit the anti-borders, Never Trump narrative, so it is deliberately being suppressed. As a result, the media are portraying Judge Talwani’s order as a victory for justice and the rule of law when the reality is that it is a victory for lawlessness.
Americans are now faced with a system in which lawbreakers are rewarded and government officials who attempt to enforce the law are punished. Rather than digging for the truth, the majority of America’s media mavens are perfectly content to push the fiction that justice can be served only by portraying alien scofflaws as victims of tyranny.
The pompous motto that graces the masthead of The Washington Post reads, “Democracy dies in darkness.” So why, when it comes to immigration law, do American media outlets refuse to shed any light on the subject?
• Dale L. Wilcox is executive director and general counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.
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