As the Biden administration continues to expand ways for immigrants to legally enter and remain in the United States, the agency tasked with overseeing and implementing those efforts is suffering under the strain of its ever-growing workload.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is struggling to keep pace with its new and growing responsibilities, according to watchdogs and agency employees, and some of its backlogs have grown to unprecedented heights. The 842,000 pending asylum cases are at an all-time high and the number is expected to exceed 1 million in 2024. The higher-than-usual number of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, coupled with global events such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan following the U.S. military’s withdrawal there, has created dueling priorities that have exacerbated longstanding capacity concerns.
President Biden has expanded the use of “humanitarian parole,” which allows various groups temporarily enter the country, to Central and South Americans fleeing persecution, Ukrainians escaping the dangers of war, Afghanis evacuated out of their home nation and others. He has offered Temporary Protected Status to 700,000 people from 16 countries. The administration has ramped up efforts to slash the wait time for those seeking naturalization or employment status. Most recently, it deployed employees overseas to conduct asylum screenings abroad and created new opportunities for family members of U.S. residents to enter the country.
Despite successes in some areas, the agency is not meeting its targets.
Many USCIS employees are also taking on new responsibilities, as they are more heavily involved in determining up front whether newly arriving migrants can remain in the country and regularly face deployments to the border to help process and screen those individuals.
“2022 brought with it significant new tasks for the agency that would create their own processing and operational challenges—challenges that the agency continues to grapple with in 2023 and which will impact future workloads,” according to a recent report from the USCIS ombudsman.
The watchdog predicted the various emergency responses by the Biden administration will “continue to present operational challenges to USCIS in the coming years.” Even before much of the new programs went into effect, the agency was experiencing a surge of new work. According to a 2021 Government Accountability Office report, USCIS’ caseload increased by 85% between 2015 and 2020. Now, the impacts of the agency’s efforts are compounding and many processing times have grown significantly.
“We’ve dealt with backlogs before but not like this, and not with some many other competing priorities,” said Michael Knowles, a long-time asylum officer who represents his colleagues in the Washington, D.C. area as part of the American Federation of Government Employees.
‘Came at a price’
USCIS’ successes have come with a heavy toll. It doubled the normal number of completed employment-based visas in fiscal 2022, which the ombudsman said was not without a cost.
“By prioritizing this adjudication, others were further delayed, at a time when backlogs have never been more severe,” the watchdog said.
The agency reduced the naturalization backlog by 62% in fiscal 2022, but led to “lesser priorities” being worked at a slower pace, with fewer completed adjudications and backlogs growing.
“These decisions, however necessary, came at a price,” the ombudsman said. “USCIS is a fee-based agency with finite resources. The determinations to prioritize certain applications and petitions meant that other workloads could not be addressed as robustly as the priority programs.”
Biden issued or extended Temporary Protected Status for 11 countries in 2022 alone. The ombudsman called processing work authorization for those populations “a never-ending task for the agency.”
Shev Dalal-Dheini, the government relations director for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said USCIS employees are being pulled from their normal workloads to address the new humanitarian pathways.
“Obviously it has an impact on adjudications across the board because there’s only a certain amount of staff and only a certain amount of funding from their fees,” Dalal-Sheini said. “When something is prioritized, that necessarily means other things are deprioritized.”
Knowles noted those being paroled into the country are only being provided residency in the U.S. for one or two years, after which time they, too, will be seeking alternative status. In other words, they will all be added to various backlogs. The administration, through Operation Allies Welcome, Uniting for Ukraine and programs modeled after it aimed at Venezuelans, Haitians, “Cubans, Nicaraguans and others, has paroled 500,000 individuals into the country.
“Even a streamlined adjudication of thousands of applications each month has added considerably to USCIS workloads,” the ombudsman said.
Competing priorities
Meanwhile, nearly 1 million immigrants already in the country are awaiting resolution on their “affirmative asylum cases,” which require lengthy investigations. The nation’s immigration courts, housed within the Justice Department, has a backlog of more than 2 million cases and individuals are waiting years to get before a judge. Dalal-Dheini noted wait times on applications for new Green Cards, lawful permanent residence, residence for those making investments in the U.S. and to petition for non-resident relatives have all spiked compared to historic averages.
The administration is simultaneously pursuing an “all hands on deck” strategy at the border, meaning most asylum officers have deployed at various points to conduct “credible fear” screenings of migrants. A federal court this week struck down Biden’s new rule that severely restricted migrants who cross the border from requesting asylum, potentially creating a new wave of arrivals that USCIS employees will have to help screen. USCIS simply does not have enough staff to complete the work, Knowles lamented.
Blas Nuñez-Neto, assistant secretary for border and immigration policy at the Homeland Security Department, acknowledged the problem at a recent panel hosted by the Migration Policy Institute.
“Every time there’s a debate about what’s happening at the border, we see increases for [Customs and Border Protection], and they, to be clear, they need those resources,” Nuñez-Neto said. “But we also need to resource the rest of the system to keep pace with what we’re seeing at the border and we just simply haven’t over the last many, many years.”
He said that was starting to change as the Biden administration has attempted to dramatically increase resources for USCIS, but noted hiring in government is “a long and painful process.” The assistant secretary said the Biden administration will continue pushing for more asylum officers, Executive Office of Immigration Review personnel, U.S. Marshals and others to “help with the rest of the system.”
Dalal-Dheini said in order to sustain backlog reduction, Congress must similarly sustain a guaranteed appropriation for the agency that has historically been largely fee-funded. Doing so, she said, would enable USCIS to “shift resources without harming other folks who are in line.” She added, however, that there is “no appetite” in Congress for providing those resources this year.
‘Losing people constantly’
The ombudsman praised USCIS for prioritizing hiring, as it has looked to reverse the impacts of a longstanding hiring freeze. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, USCIS threatened to furlough most of its workers as normal funds collected through fees dried up. Congress eventually intervened, but not before a longstanding hiring freeze depleted the agency.
Still, Knowles noted the pressure, pace and unending nature of the growing workload—coupled with the uneasiness many employees feel about their new responsibilities—has led to high rates of burnout.
“We are hiring constantly, but we are losing people constantly,” Knowles said. A recent GAO report confirmed USCIS is experiencing unusually high levels of turnover.
The ombudsman also praised USCIS for taking steps to mitigate processing inefficiencies, digitizing some of its offerings and adjusting the frequency of employment forms so individuals had to reconfirm their status less often, though it suggested the agency still has a long way to go.
“While these steps addressed necessary issues to give the agency workforce sufficient breathing space to take on its backlogs, the majority of these actions address only the symptoms and not the root causes of backlogs themselves,” the watchdog said. “Prioritization steps are necessary, but the larger stumbling blocks of the underlying adjudications remain.”
The agency can expand the ways in which it eases the burdens for applicants looking to extend their stays, the ombudsman said, such as by reducing the number of instances in which they must provide biometric information. USCIS should further leverage new technologies and ask Congress for “some continuing form of appropriated funds” to support its vastly increased parole efforts.
Until the lawmakers and the agency find ways to fundamentally change the system, the situation may only worsen. Knowles noted backlogs have not grown due to laziness, as asylum and other USCIS workers have a “strong work ethic” and “take tremendous pride in their work.” He likened the work environment his colleagues face—regularly speaking with migrants who are “tired, hungry, scared and bewildered”—to first responders who absorb the trauma they constantly see.
“What happens when you can’t get them out of the burning building?” Knowles asked, pointing to the growing backlogs. “You gave it your best effort, but you lost them?”
Post is for information and educational purposes
Category Archives: Illegal Immigration
That Kabul Dissent Cable will be at the Center of Campaign Ads
After months and months of the State Department blocking the release of the dissent cable, finally a few in the House got access. Getting access was so bad that legislation was about to be introduced to force the issue after several subpoenas.
click here for a photo gallery/credits courtesy of The Guardian
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., is slamming the Afghanistan dissent cable to which Secretary of State Antony Blinken allowed congressional access Tuesday as “embarrassing” and saying that it debunks the Biden administration’s narrative that it was caught off guard by the country’s swift collapse in 2021.
Issa, who serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Fox News Digital that he was the first committee member to view the dissent channel cable from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and Washington’s response.
The State Department’s “dissent channel” allows for contrary views to be expressed by officials. The document, signed by 23 staffers and diplomats, warned about the possibility of a rapid Taliban advance as the U.S. left the country, which President Joe Biden and other top officials downplayed at the time.
“What we saw was their prediction, with great accuracy, of exactly what was going to happen and what the outcome would be if they did not change their directions,” the congressman said. “We saw a response from the office of the State Department saying, ‘We hear you, and we agree, basically, we don’t take it lightly.’ And then, obviously, we know what they did and didn’t do, which was totally insufficient for the warning that was given.”
“They redacted the specific names, but we now know that many of them were senior executive surrogates, meaning people that are paid at the highest level in the State Department,” he continued. “They knew and understood that there was no way that the Afghan military was going to defend successfully. They did not disagree with that, and as a result, they knew that Kabul would fall within weeks, that the Taliban would do what they have done, which is to continue to kill and persecute individuals, and they allowed it to happen.”
Issa said the cable also revealed that “there was no expectation by the State Department that there would be sustainability” in the region and knew that the billions of dollars of U.S. military equipment that was left behind was going to fall into the Taliban’s hands.
Issa said the cable went out on July 13, 2021, the response came back a week later on July 20, and Kabul officially fell weeks later on Aug. 15.
“Every prediction came through, including the quick collapse of the Afghan army,” he said.
Issa said his next course of action is trying to get the document declassified so that the families of the 13 U.S. service members who were killed during the chaotic withdrawal can get to the bottom of what happened.
“Redacting only a portion of a portion of a sentence takes this from a secret document to a confidential document, and confidential, quite frankly, in this case is even inappropriate,” he said.
“This is classified because it’s embarrassing,” he added. “There’s absolutely no reason the American people shouldn’t see it, and I will not rest until they do.”
“The bottom line is nothing ends here,” added Issa’s communications director, Jonathan Wilcox.
“This obliterates the administration’s big lie on Afghanistan – that this could not have been foretold, nobody could have seen this coming, nothing could have done to prevent it,” he said.
“We know it was received. We know it wasn’t followed,” he continued. “Their personnel on the ground saw this, reported it, warned them and were ignored.”
In a statement to Fox News Digital, the State Department accused Republicans of distorting the truth.
“We strongly disagree with the characterizations from some Members of Congress on the contents of the Afghanistan dissent cable,” a spokesperson said. “As Secretary Blinken previously stated in public testimony before Congress, the cable did not suggest the Afghan government and security forces were going to collapse prior to our departure. As the Secretary also said publicly, the Department agreed with the concerns raised in the cable, and in fact, a number of the recommendations the cable made were already in motion. The Secretary personally read and oversaw a response to the dissent cable, and its contents were factored into his thinking.”
“Taking the step of allowing Members of Congress to view the cable, despite the risk that it compromises the purpose of the Dissent Channel, was an extraordinary accommodation and it’s disappointing some Members are choosing to distort the content of the confidential cable,” the spokesperson added.
The State Department referred Fox News Digital to Blinken’s testimony in September 2021 referring to the cable. Continue to read here including the number of times that subpoenas were issued.
Migrants in America Causing Collapse of Law Enforcement
These sanctuary governors and mayors are arguing the wrong point. It is not so much about where to house these people and re-shipping them to other locations, but rather the scandal should be to tell the entire illegal immigrant operation that there is nothing in America to come to that is better than what they left. Consider just how much money these people spend to come here and the deadly traveling just to get beyond our borders. Are these people coming to anything better in the long term than what they left? Do they really want to work in slaughter houses, work farms in disgusting living conditions? Do they really want to be trafficked in the sex trade industry?
Ah, but read on to see a Chicago police station and consider how it is in expensive hotels across the country where we have no idea of their names, ages or even their history, no visas, no passports and no documents at all. How can law enforcement even begin to deal with this considering all the other existing crime across the country….
A huge hat tip to Rebecca Brannon!
New footage shows a Chicago police station filled with mattresses and dozens of illegal migrants, as the city struggles to house the hundreds of border crossers arriving there each day.
Officials in Chicago have said they cannot afford to rent hotel rooms for the more than 8,000 migrants who have arrived in their city and have pushed for more federal funds to cover costs.
Due to the lack of available shelters, some migrants have turned to police stations for a safe place to sleep.
The migrant-housing crisis in Chicago follows last week’s end to the Trump-era COVID-19 border restriction known as Title 42, which allowed U.S. authorities to send migrants back to Mexico without giving them a chance to seek asylum.
Tens of thousands of people hurried to cross the border illegally into the U.S. before President Joe Biden implemented a strict new asylum policy to replace Title 42.
In the shocking footage posted by photojournalist Rebecca Brannon, dozens and dozens of migrants are seen sitting on and around mattresses in a Chicago police station.
Brannon reported that many of the migrants have slept and eaten on the floors, which has placed a strain on the law enforcement officers whose day-to-day jobs have been made more difficult by their presence.
Small children were seen running around and an alley sits full of trash produced by the migrants.
Chicago already has a serious violent crime problem, with its new influx of migrants likely to further strain budgets desperately-needed to try and make the city safer.
More than 8,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago since August, which is when southern states started to bus asylum seekers north. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent migrants to the Democrat-led cities to help ease the burden on border towns.
‘To provide much-needed relief to our overrun border communities, Texas began busing migrants to sanctuary cities such as your ‘Welcoming City,’ along with Washington, DC, New York City, and Philadelphia, with more to come. Until Biden secures the border to stop the inflow of mass migration, Texas will continue this necessary program,’ Abbott noted in a letter earlier this month.
Migrants been sent to cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia and New York. Migrants have also arrived in Washington, DC, with buses stopping outside the home of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Despite the Chicago’s obvious overcrowding issue, new Mayor Brandon Johnson, a progressive Democrat who assumed office Monday, said in his inauguration speech that in Chicago, ‘there’s enough room for everyone.’
Johnson’s affirmed commitment to welcoming migrants to Chicago follows his predecessor – Lori Lightfoot’s decision to declare a state of emergency earlier this month, calling migrant arrivals a ‘humanitarian crisis’ and pushing for increased federal aid.
Chicago officials have said they expect a $53 million shortfall without additional aid because of the cost from housing migrants.
‘We’re in May, and we haven’t received any funding from FEMA,’ Chicago budget director Susie Park recently told the City Council, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. ‘The need is great. A lot of requests are coming in. New York is probably asking for $1 billion. There is a lot of need.’
WH/Susan Rice is well Aware of Child Labor Violations/Immigrants
Yes, THAT Susan Rice, the hateful video/Benghazi lady that works at the Biden White House. Furthermore, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Beccera does nothing when it comes to sponsors that immigrant children are released to. And then there is the Department of Labor….silence…
But this is nothing new as it began under the Obama administration. After an internet search, several outlets reported much that same that the Obama administration actually did separate children from parents or when just children came across the border they were placed into sponsors’ care and trafficked into the sex slave industry or into agricultural operations under all the same conditions described by the recent New York Times investigation. Yes, imagine the New York Times actually doing on investigation on this scandal…yes….after a long read, there is much the NYT’s left out but it is a start, at least.
As a primer, the Department of Labor is responsible for child labor law enforcement which does include limited exemptions. These immigrant children are actually slave labor working in conditions and overnight shifts that violate the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Related stories: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/25/us/unaccompanied-migrant-child-workers-exploitation.html
https://www.axios.com/2023/03/01/american-child-labor
So, what did the New York Times investigation offer? Titled –>
Read the full NYT’s investigation here.
The White House and federal agencies were repeatedly alerted to signs of children at risk. The warnings were ignored or missed.
In the spring of 2021, Linda Brandmiller was working at an arena in San Antonio that had been converted into an emergency shelter for migrant children. Thousands of boys were sleeping on cots as the Biden administration grappled with a record number of minors crossing into the United States without their parents.
Ms. Brandmiller’s job was to help vet sponsors, and she had been trained to look for possible trafficking. In her first week, two cases jumped out: One man told her he was sponsoring three boys to employ them at his construction company. Another, who lived in Florida, was trying to sponsor two children who would have to work off the cost of bringing them north.
She immediately contacted supervisors working with the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal agency responsible for these children. “This is urgent,” she wrote in an email reviewed by The New York Times.
But within days, she noticed that one of the children was set to be released to the man in Florida. She wrote another email, this time asking for a supervisor’s “immediate attention” and adding that the government had already sent a 14-year-old boy to the same sponsor.
Ms. Brandmiller also emailed the shelter’s manager. A few days later, her building access was revoked during her lunch break. She said she was never told why she had been fired.
Over the past two years, more than 250,000 migrant children have come alone to the United States. Thousands of children have ended up in punishing jobs across the country — working overnight in slaughterhouses, replacing roofs, operating machinery in factories — all in violation of child labor laws, a recent Times investigation showed. After the article’s publication in February, the White House announced policy changes and a crackdown on companies that hire children.
Warning Signs
Inside the White House, Ms. Rice was at the center of the migrant children crisis. As she pressed to move children out of shelters more quickly, clues began to emerge about what was happening to them once they left.
In the summer of 2021, near the height of the crush at the border, H.H.S. managers wrote a memo detailing their worry about increasing reports that children were working alongside their sponsors, a sign of possible labor trafficking. Ms. Rice’s team received the memo, and Ms. Rice was also told what it said, according to two people familiar with the conversations.
Andrew J. Bates, White House deputy press secretary, disputed that, saying Ms. Rice “did not see the memo and was not made aware of its contents.”
Around the same time, Ms. Rice’s team was told about concerns over a large group of children who had been released to one city in Alabama, according to six current and former staff members. The situation was the subject of frequent updates as H.H.S. sent case managers to the city to check on children, and coordinated with the Labor Department and Homeland Security Investigations to look into whether they were working in poultry plants. The full article is found here.
One Pill Can Kill
Those dying from Fentanyl are not drug addicts, rather they are dying because they think they may be taking regular over the counter medication or simply eating candy. They are being poisoned. This White House has proven it does not care but the Drug Enforcement Agency DOES care.
Do you ever hear from the FBI that reports from the Southern border? How about U.S. Southern Command? How about Space Command? Yes, Space Command….
“We can use our space detection capabilities, optical cameras,” Croft told NBC 6. “We can track things within a couple of hours and see things moving.”
That includes being able to see what’s happening in places like Colombia and Venezuela, where intelligence experts fear drug traffickers and terrorist groups will join forces.
Around the clock, space and intelligence experts are sharing what they find.
Inside a room at Southern Command, there is a big screen that shows where the satellites are located. There is also a host of workstations where space experts can explain what they are seeing to representatives from the military and federal agencies.
“Space Command can provide a perspective to be able to identify and find some of these folks, the ways that they communicate, the ways they move,” said Lt. Col. Bobby Schmitt, who is with the U.S. Space Force and is assigned to coordinate what happens in orbit with Croft’s team. “Space Command provides the ability to see down and find these folks.” More here.
DEA Announces Results of Enforcement Surge to Reduce the Fentanyl Supply Across the United States
As part of the One Pill Can Kill initiative, the DEA and its law enforcement partners seized more than 10.2 million fentanyl pills and approximately 980 pounds of fentanyl powder during the period of May 23 through Sept. 8, 2022. The amount of fentanyl taken off the streets during this surge is equivalent to more than 36 million lethal doses removed from the illegal drug supply. Additionally, 338 weapons were seized, including rifles, shotguns, pistols, and hand grenades.
Every adult across the country should be talking about this and every school regardless of age should be taking all precautions.
As part of the One Pill Can Kill initiative, the DEA and its law enforcement partners seized more than 10.2 million fentanyl pills and approximately 980 pounds of fentanyl powder during the period of May 23 through Sept. 8, 2022. The amount of fentanyl taken off the streets during this surge is equivalent to more than 36 million lethal doses removed from the illegal drug supply. Additionally, 338 weapons were seized, including rifles, shotguns, pistols, and hand grenades.
Of the 390 cases investigated during this period, 51 cases are linked to overdose poisonings and 35 cases link directly to one or both of the primary Mexican cartels responsible for the majority of fentanyl in the United States – the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). In addition, 129 investigations are linked to social media platforms, including Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and TikTok. These results build upon the One Pill Can Kill Phase II
results announced by DEA Administrator Anne Milgram in December 2021.
“Across the country, fentanyl is devastating families and communities, and we know that violent, criminal drug cartels bear responsibility for this crisis,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “The Justice Department, including the extraordinary professionals of the DEA, is working to disrupt and dismantle the operations of these cartels, remove deadly fentanyl from our communities, and save Americans’ lives.”
“For the past year, confronting the fentanyl crisis has been the top priority for DEA. The most urgent threat to our communities, our kids, and our families are the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG who are mass producing and supplying the fentanyl that is poisoning and killing Americans,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram. “The Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG are ruthless, criminal organizations that use deception and treachery to drive addiction with complete disregard for human life. To save American lives, the DEA is relentlessly focused on defeating the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG by degrading their operations to make it impossible for them to do business.”
Fentanyl remains the deadliest drug threat facing this nation. In 2021, a record number of Americans – 107,622 – died from a drug poisoning or overdose. Sixty-six percent of those deaths can be attributed to synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.
Drug traffickers have expanded their inventory to sell fentanyl in a variety of bright colors, shapes, and sizes
. Rainbow fentanyl was first reported to DEA in February 2022, and it has now been seized in 21 states.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin. Just two milligrams of fentanyl, or the amount that could fit on the tip of a pencil, is considered a potentially lethal dose.
As part of DEA’s ongoing efforts to educate the public and encourage parents and caregivers to talk to teens and young adults about the dangers of fake pills and illicit drugs, DEA has also created a new resource, “What Every Parent and Caregiver Needs to Know About Fake Pills.”
In September 2021, DEA launched the One Pill Can Kill enforcement effort and public awareness campaign to combat the fake pill threat and educate the public about the dangers of fentanyl pills being disguised and sold as prescription medications, despite these pills not containing any of the actual medications advertised. The only safe medications are ones prescribed by a trusted medical professional and dispensed by a licensed pharmacist. All other pills are unsafe and potentially deadly.
Additional resources for parents and the community can be found on DEA’s Fentanyl Awareness page.