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A Government Accountability Office audit has revealed severe security lapses in the Biden administration’s migrant parole programs, including the approval of sponsors who were deceased, used fake identities, or posed national security risks. Among the bizarre cases, someone applied using Elvis Presley’s identity decades after his 1977 death, while more than 1,400 migrants were admitted despite their sponsors being dead. Other applications included photos of journalist Connie Chung and “NCIS” actor Cote de Pablo for identity verification, and one applicant with two child pornography convictions was approved to sponsor a migrant child.
The programs under scrutiny included United for Ukraine and one covering Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan nationals. Both were designed to reduce pressure at the southern border by allowing migrants to fly directly to U.S. airports with sponsor support rather than crossing illegally. However, GAO investigators found a “ready-fire-aim approach” where the administration prioritized speed over security, only addressing fraud concerns after hundreds of thousands had already entered.
The Biden administration suspended the Cuba-Haiti-Nicaragua-Venezuela program in summer 2024 after Customs and Border Protection discovered nearly 20% of Venezuelan sponsors posed public safety or national security risks, with some linked to drug dealing or money laundering investigations. This suspension affected 29,000 approved migrants, resulting in 8,100 canceled travel permits.
The audit revealed systematic failures in vetting procedures. Neither U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services nor Customs and Border Protection verified whether applicants met the legal requirement that parole be used only for urgent humanitarian need or significant public benefit. Each agency assumed the other had completed this crucial check. USCIS also failed to ensure sponsors fulfilled their commitments to financially support migrants, describing the sponsor agreement as more of a “nudge” than a binding obligation.
Additional findings included human traffickers attempting to sponsor Ukrainian migrants, people selling sponsorships for $5,000, and previously deported migrants being readmitted as parolees. The Department of Homeland Security cited “limited bedspace” for some problematic admissions. Once admitted, parolees were largely untracked, and under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s directive, weren’t considered deportation priorities even when their parole expired.
The Trump administration terminated these programs in January 2025 and recently ended the family reunification parole program for seven countries. The Homeland Security Department agreed to improve fraud mitigation but stated it has no intention of recreating similar programs, declaring no need to apply lessons learned from the Biden-era initiatives.
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