The Biden administration relied on the “honor system” for paroled migrants to check in voluntarily and failed to keep track of the 2 million unauthorized migrants released into the country, according to a new report from Congress’s chief investigative agency.
Biden’s U.S. Department of Homeland Security had multiple breakdowns when it came to processing and monitoring paroled migrants and ultimately lost track of most of them.
The Government Accountability Office, which is a nonpartisan government watchdog that oversees the executive branch, issued the report with a vague headline and a neutral tone. But a deeper dive shines new light on the extent of the Biden administration’s border failures, particularly the lack of oversight of migrants set free on “parole.”
Under Biden’s catch-and-release program, humanitarian parole became a loophole for migrants who flooded the border. Parole is not an immigration status and is meant to be temporary in nature.
The Center for Immigration Studies also weighed in on the report, publishing an article, “GAO Report Confirms Everything the Center Told You About Biden’s Parole Schemes,” and noted, “the bland government document is chock-full of scary details.”
According to the 50-page GAO report and summary findings released on May 18, U.S. Customs and Border Protection granted 2.4 million paroles at the southwest border from late 2018 through May 2025.
Roughly 2.3 million occurred under Biden, noted Andrew Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies, “raising the question as to why the report mentioned any period other than the Biden years.”
CPB and U.S. Border Patrol released parolees into the country, trusting migrants to self-report to field offices and attend court hearings.
Once parole is granted, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is supposed to monitor them to make sure they follow release requirements, like attending immigration court proceedings.
However, ICE relied on the honor system and hoped the migrants would check in voluntarily. Investigators found that many paroled noncitizens failed to check in as required, the GAO determined.
The GAO report found other issues related to dating sharing between DHS agencies. In part, ICE struggles to monitor millions of migrants paroled at the southwest border because it doesn’t have parole-status data from CBP.
“ICE doesn’t readily have information to identify people who were paroled at the southwest border and doesn’t monitor them as required,” the GAO noted in the report’s Fast Facts.
Based on GAO estimates, in 2024, ICE lost track of at least 70% of migrants paroled, The Washington Times reported.
The Trump administration has targeted immigration enforcement from every angle since President Donald Trump took office, including restricting the use of parole and shutting down the CBP One app. CBP terminated the parole of approximately 654,000 noncitizens through written notices in April 2025.
The current DHS shared the article on social media, adding “This is the Biden Administration’s legacy. Never forget what they did to our country.”
This is the Biden Administration’s legacy.
Never forget what they did to our country. https://t.co/f5sBA7WQtz
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) May 22, 2026
Parole provides temporary permission for a noncitizen to stay in the U.S. without a formal visa or admission, but it is typically granted on a case-by-case basis for an urgent humanitarian need, medical emergencies, or to participate in legal proceedings.
Under Biden, that all changed when humanitarian parole was almost rubber-stamped due to the influx of migrants at the border and a lack of holding capacity as well as ICE’s detention capacity.
Over half were to Mexicans, Cubans and Venezuelans, followed by Haitian and Nicaraguans. Along with that, 50 percent of paroles CBP granted at the southwest border were to single adults.
“If you want proof the Biden administration created CHNV Parole to artificially drive down apprehension numbers, look no further than those statistics, and given that the United States had poor diplomatic relations with three of those countries, and the fourth (Haiti) hasn’t had a functioning government in years, paroling those aliens all-but guaranteed they would be here indefinitely, if not forever,” wrote Arthur, CIS’ Resident Fellow in Law and Policy.
In July 2021, CBP’s U.S. Border Patrol authorized agents to parole apprehended noncitizens under certain conditions, such as limited immigration detention space.
Further, in May 2023, CBP expanded access for noncitizens to use the CBP One mobile appl to schedule appointments in advance. Almost all — 97 percent — of appointments in fiscal years 2023 and 2024 resulted in paroles, the GAO audit found.
The Washington Times reported ICE doesn’t even know how many of the people in its files were released by CBP, its sister agency, because CBP doesn’t share that data with ICE.
ICE also doesn’t know how many parolees it lost track of, but the GAO offered some rough calculations.
In 2024, more than 612,000 migrants were paroled at the southwest border, according to GAO. But ICE only enrolled 179,000 people in its alternatives to detention program that whole year, and many of those were ICE’s own releases, so the rest could be anywhere.
In the report, the GAO recommended data sharing of parole status information from CBP, so it’s easily accessible to ICE officers to improve enforcement and monitoring decisions.
In its official response to GAO, DHS agreed with the recommendation and said it is trying.
“DHS remains committed to ensuring the overall safety, security and well-being of our nation by both securing U.S. borders as well as ensuring paroled noncitizens are adhering to the conditions of their release,” said Jeffrey Bobich, the director of financial management for DHS.
Bobich noted in January 2025, DHS and ICE issued guidance that “emphasized the importance of ICE reviewing cases in which noncitizens are paroled as the southwest border to determine whether further enforcement action is appropriate.”
GAO found other failures, including with ICE’s branch of Enforcement and Removal Operations. ERO is not conducting its required monitoring of all noncitizens CBP paroled at the southwest border and placed into removal proceedings, the GAO said.
“ERO relies on the ’honor system’ to ensure noncitizens report to field offices as directed. However, ERO officials told us that not all paroled noncitizens report as required,” GAO said.
The GAO investigation also found CBP knowingly paroled some migrants with criminal records, though it said they were “nonviolent minor offenses,” due to limited detention space and time-in-custody policies.
Border officials acknowledged some migrants could have criminal records in their home countries that CBP didn’t know about.
During the border crisis, Biden officials claimed the people they were letting in were likely eligible for asylum. Parole was meant to give them a chance to enter the U.S. and make their official asylum claims later.
But the GAO report found that CBP didn’t actually know whether the people it was paroling had legitimate asylum claims. The border interview was “streamlined” and didn’t get into specifics of why they were attempting to flee their home country, The Washington Times reported.
In many cases, CBP officers didn’t even collect sworn statements from the migrants before releasing them, GAO said. They consistently granted them parole, almost automatically, with 97% of migrants who used CBP’s One App to pre-schedule their arrivals receiving parole.
In-depth interviews were conducted if CBP had advance notice that a case had been flagged by the National Targeting Center as a national security or safety risk.
