The anti-immigrant discourse of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has reached worrying levels. Not content with promising the largest deportation operation in U.S. history, Trump is now threatening to expel 1.3 million immigrants who have arrived legally in the country in the last two years thanks to Biden administration programs such as humanitarian parole (created in 2022 for Venezuelan immigrants and extended to citizens of Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua the following year) and CBP One, the cellphone application that allows asylum seekers to request asylum at eight ports of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Figures from the Customs and Border Protection Office indicate that between January 2023 and August 2024, around 800,000 immigrants arrived in the United States thanks to CBP One and another 530,000 on humanitarian flights.
“I would revoke it and they get out. And, the app is bad, but the worst is is the flights (parole) because they tried to say ‘we are going to toughen up the border a little bit,’ they have planes flying over the border loaded up with illegal migrants, people that shouldn’t be in our country, going to the Midwest, going to all places because everything now is a border state,” he said in a telephone interview with FOX Newssending this message to migrants who have been paroled in the U.S.: “Get ready to leave, especially quickly if they’re criminals. Get ready to leave because you’re going to be going out real fast.”
The statements have especially alarmed immigrants granted humanitarian parole, who are uncertain about their future after the November 5 elections.
Trump’s comments come after his running mate, J.D. Vance, questioned the legality of the 20,000 Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio — falsely accused by Trump of eating locals’ pets — who received temporary protected status from the Obama administration based on the 1990 law, which allows foreigners who have had to flee their homes due to natural disasters to work and live in the United States.
Thousands of Haitians were living illegally in the United States after the January 2010 earthquake that devastated the island. “If Kamala Harris waves the wand illegally and says these people are now here legally, I’m still going to call them an ‘illegal alien,’” Vance told reporters at an event in North Carolina earlier this month. “An illegal action by Kamala Harris does not make an alien legal.”
When asked by reporter Bill Melugin about the Republican’s attacks against the CBP One cell phone app and humanitarian flights, Mia Ehrenberg — the spokesperson for the Kamala Harris campaign — replied: “As a prosecutor for over 20 years, Vice President Harris has spent her career putting criminals behind bars and upholding the rule of law in this country […] As vice president, she supported the bipartisan border security bill, the strongest reform in decades to deliver needed resources for greater border security. As president, she will sign that bill and will fight for tough, smart solutions to secure the border, keep communities safe, and reform our broken immigration system.”
With this statement, the Democratic campaign is not sending a reassuring message to the immigrants who arrived in the U.S. thanks to the two programs promoted by the Biden-Harris administration. Instead, it is a defense of the bipartisan border security bill, which is not the great immigration reform the U.S. has been in need of for years.
“The Democratic Party has gone completely to the right with this project,” immigration lawyer Ezequiel Hernández told EL PAÍS. “It is a taxing, punitive, exclusionary law that only seeks money to stop the flow of immigrants, and leaves out the 15 million illegal immigrants that we already have here. It also does not talk about the Dreamers,” she said, in reference to the individuals who were brought to the U.S. as children.
Hernández added: “Harris is not at all popular among undocumented immigrants who have American children and pay taxes and don’t have a work permit, and see others arrive with the possibility of requesting one without having to do anything.”
The lawyer dismisses Trump’s threats against humanitarian parole, arguing it is not a feasible move. “He could eliminate both programs upon entering the White House, but the people who arrived with parole have power because they are legally here even if Trump says otherwise,” said Hernández. “These immigrants could go to court to protect themselves, but if they have exceeded the time stipulated by the program [two years] and have not requested asylum or some other option for immigration relief, they are at risk of deportation. Those who entered with CBP One would also be protected.”
Both programs were designed to prevent immigrants from being exposed to the risks of the Darién crossing and other dangerous migration route, and to reduce illegal crossings. “The truth is that parole is a very generous program because you can come with just a sponsor, there is no filter to see if you really qualify for asylum. There are 30,000 people per month from four nationalities, which is not a lot, and the truth is that few people will be affected if this shut down,” said Hernández.
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