By Ariana Figueroa | AZ Mirror
WASHINGTON — Republican members of a U.S. House Judiciary Committee panel scrutinized the head of the Department of Homeland Security agency tasked with processing legal pathways to immigration during a contentious hearing Wednesday about the Biden administration’s parole program that grants temporary protections for nationals from some countries.
That program temporarily grants work permits and allows nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to remain in the country if they are sponsored by someone in the United States.
Rep. Tom McClintock of California, the chair of the Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, accused U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services of creating “unlawful” pathways to legal immigration through humanitarian parole programs – an authority presidents have used since the 1950s.
The chair of the full Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan of Ohio, also grilled USCIS Director Ur Jaddou about if parole programs “of this magnitude” had been used before.
Since President Joe Biden launched the program in 2022, more than 500,000 people have been paroled through that authority.
