It's not news that the Biden administration's handling of its self-inflicted border crisis is an abject failure, but new information about the illegal alien charged with the abduction and murder of Georgia student Laken Riley illustrates how out of control things have gotten and how unconcerned the president and his cabinet are about following the law.
Reading from Department of Homeland Security files on Jose Antonio Ibarra, an illegal alien from Venezuela, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) revealed confirmation from DHS that Ibarra had been paroled illegally in September 2022 before he allegedly killed Riley on February 22.
As Graham explained Tuesday, Ibarra's file states that the illegal alien was granted "parole due to detention capacity at the central processing center in El Paso, Texas." That is, "he was paroled because of capacity problems," Graham emphasized.
According to federal law the Biden administration is supposed to follow, parole can only be granted by the secretary of Homeland Security — currently the impeached Alejandro Mayorkas — on a case-by-case basis when there is an "urgent humanitarian reason or significant public benefit" in paroling a specific illegal alien.
To put a finer point on it, the Biden administration illegally released Ibarra due to the overwhelming surge of illegal aliens brought on by policies enacted by the Biden administration.
"There is no effective detention when it comes to illegal immigrants coming to our border," noted Graham in Tuesday's hearing. "There are about 40,000 bed spaces and we're talking three million encounters. The ‘catch and release’ program is just one of the greatest pull factors," he emphasized. "The price of this policy by the Biden Administration is pretty darn high."
DHS just confirmed to me that the man charged with Laken Riley’s murder was paroled into the U.S. illegally, “due to detention capacity at the Central Processing Center in El Paso, Texas.”
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) April 16, 2024
He wasn’t granted parole because he provided a significant benefit to the country or that… pic.twitter.com/dvMOSmmGHO
Ibarra is just one of the more than one million illegal aliens paroled into the U.S. by the Biden administration since 2021. The president's policy of mass parole means that, like Ibarra, the required humanitarian or public benefit criteria are being ignored entirely — with deadly consequences for Americans.