Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas
Alejandro Mayorkas: Humiliation Abroad and Open Borders at Home Are a Lethal Mix Bring Afghans to America Mayorkas Meets with Parents of Separate Families MORE uses his parole authority to allow some Afghan evacuees to enter the United States while they wait for their applications to be processed, a senior administration official reported on Tuesday.
The official said that in some cases, Mayorkas uses its parole authority to allow Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applicants who are in process but have not completed the application process to obtain parole.
“The Secretary of Homeland Security uses his probation authority, including his ability to impose particular parole conditions on those who arrive, to ensure that those who arrive here obviously do so with the appropriate legal status,” he said. say the official.
Those on parole should first pass a rigorous security check that the Biden administration is conducting for Afghans who want to enter the US. The administration transports the evacuees to traffic centers in third countries where they are subject to security checks.
Under the parole authority, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can allow people outside the U.S. to enter the country for “humanitarian reasons or for significant public benefits.”
The senior government official did not specify other categories of Afghans beyond SIV applicants who might be eligible for parole. The administration has also been evacuating other Afghans eligible for priority 1 and priority 2 refugee designation.
The administration is committed to providing a pathway to America for those who helped the United States but did not meet the two-year work requirements previously required to obtain an SIV, which will allow them to come to the United States. through the long process of refugees.
“This probation authority is one that provides some flexibility to people for whom there is no relevant legal status and, in appropriate cases, where people passed the security check I mentioned, this probation authority Conditional release – again there are conditions for accompanying parole, if any – is one of the things at stake here when people enter the United States, ”the official said.
The official did not expand on what would constitute “appropriate” circumstances in which a person fleeing Afghanistan could be granted parole.
DHS did not return any requests for further information.
The movement follows pressure from lawmakers for Mayorkas to use its probation authority for broad categories of people.
“It is imperative that the Department of Homeland Security establish a special humanitarian parole program specifically for women leaders, activists, human rights defenders, parliamentarians, journalists and other highly visible women currently at risk. This would allow the immediate and efficient transfer of ‘these extremely vulnerable women in the United States,’ a bipartisan group of more than 75 lawmakers wrote in a letter to Mayorkas last week.
The 14-step SIV process lasted more than 800 days even earlier President Biden
Joe BidenHouse Democrats vote on budget over Tuesday Biden envoy calls on North Korea to restart nuclear talks. moved to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan.
Since then, the administration has taken some steps to speed up the processing of SIVs, including allowing the final step, the medical examination, to take place on U.S. soil.
More than 100,000 people may seek to evacuate Afghanistan, including Americans and Afghans at risk and their families. Estimates suggest that between 10,000 and 15,000 Americans remain in Afghanistan, along with 80,000 Afghan allies and their families, prior to the evacuation operation.
The U.S. military logged its largest airlift daily over a 24-hour period Monday through Tuesday, and flew 12,700 people out of Afghanistan.