Biden’s Parole Schemes: What the GAO Found

A December 2025 Government Accountability Office audit confirmed what immigration enforcement officials had warned since 2021: President Biden (D) and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas (D) converted a narrow emergency legal authority — humanitarian parole, designed for case-by-case extraordinary relief — into a mass-migration pipeline that admitted 2.86 million people over four fiscal years with minimal vetting and no congressional authorization.

GAO-26-107433 examined the CHNV program (Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela), the CBP One app enrollment pipeline, and traditional humanitarian parole grants. The finding: the Biden administration issued more paroles in FY2021–2024 than had been granted in the entire prior history of the program combined. The legal standard requires “case-by-case determination of significant public benefit or urgent humanitarian reason.” GAO found DHS applied no such standard — approvals were programmatic, wholesale, and largely automated.

The human cost of that paper-thin vetting is documented in the Laken Riley case: Jose Antonio Ibarra was paroled into the United States in February 2022 under the CHNV program. On February 22, 2024, he murdered 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley in Athens, Georgia. He was sentenced to life in prison. The Laken Riley Act — mandating ICE detention of illegal immigrants charged with theft or violence — became the first legislation President Trump signed in his second term on January 29, 2025.

• 2.86Mtotal humanitarian paroles granted by Biden DHS, FY2021–2024— GAO-26-107433
• 531,307CHNV (Cuba/Haiti/Nicaragua/Venezuela) paroles granted— GAO-26-107433
• ~985KCBP One app appointments converted to parole entry— GAO-26-107433
• +800%increase in humanitarian parole grants from FY2020 to FY2024— GAO-26-107433
• 1,400+fraudulent parole applications flagged — Elvis Presley SSN, deceased sponsors— GAO / NY Post
• Jan 29, 2025Laken Riley Act signed — first law of Trump's second term— Congress.gov

Federal immigration law (INA §212(d)(5)) authorizes the Secretary of Homeland Security to grant parole “for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit” on a case-by-case basis. The parenthetical is not decoration — Congress inserted it explicitly to prohibit programmatic parole. Prior administrations had used the authority sparingly: a few thousand per year for medical emergencies, witness protection, and similar narrow circumstances.

The Biden administration’s USCIS Director, Ur Jaddou (D), issued internal guidance in 2021 treating national-origin and poverty as independently sufficient humanitarian bases for parole. DHS’s subsequent CHNV program structure pre-approved hundreds of thousands of paroles before individual applications were filed — the opposite of a case-by-case review. GAO reviewed a sample of case files and found that many included no individualized determination at all.

Beyond the structural abuse, GAO identified a fraud layer in the CHNV application system itself: more than 1,400 fraudulent applications were flagged as of the report date. Among them: applications submitted using the Social Security Numbers of deceased Americans — including one filed using Elvis Presley’s Social Security Number. Others listed deceased U.S. residents as financial sponsors. The New York Post first reported the specifics; the GAO report documents the category in aggregate.

DHS’s fraud-detection unit flagged the applications but the report found no mechanism to revoke paroles already granted on the basis of those fraudulent applications. The parole recipients remained in the United States.

“Case-by-case basis? Every case, every day — for four years. That is not what Congress authorized.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) · December 17, 2025

Jose Antonio Ibarra entered the United States in February 2022 under the CHNV humanitarian parole program — one of 531,307 Venezuelans paroled in under the scheme. He was not individually vetted against Venezuelan criminal records (which the U.S. government cannot access). He settled in Athens, Georgia. On February 22, 2024, Ibarra murdered Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student at Augusta University, during a morning run near the University of Georgia campus.

Ibarra was sentenced to life in prison. He had previously been arrested in New York City on an unrelated charge and released under that city’s sanctuary policy without notification to ICE. The Laken Riley Act, making ICE detention mandatory for illegal immigrants charged with theft or violence, passed the House and Senate with bipartisan support and was signed by President Trump on January 29, 2025 — the first bill of his second term.

On his first day in office, Trump issued executive orders terminating both the CHNV program and the CBP One app, effectively ending new parole grants under the Biden framework. DHS began a phased enforcement review of existing CHNV parolees still in the country. The administration also requested that federal courts vacate the Biden-era parole grants wholesale — litigation that remains pending as of May 2026.