In yet another blow to U.S. national security, the Biden administration last year slashed the screening process for illegal Chinese migrants to nearly nothing.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) previously grilled asylum seekers from the Asian nation with approximately 40 questions to determine their eligibility. Inexplicably, that list was pared down to five last spring.
That’s the shocking news first reported by the Daily Caller last week. And it coincided with a massive surge of young males entering the country from a communist point of origin.
Experts now warn that this vast simplification is filled with risks to national security. Timothy Heath, a defense researcher with the RAND Corporation think tank, acknowledged that the sheer number of Chinese migrants coming to the U.S. is “overwhelming.”
He cautioned, however, that “any simplification risks raising the risk that unwanted individuals slip through the cracks.”
I think whomever actually signed off on reducing questions for people from China should be grilled by Congress. It's almost as though parts of our government are undercutting other parts. @GOPoversighthttps://t.co/yoRrr1lACk
— William Maturin (@TrafalgarJones) January 8, 2024
Meanwhile, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party told the New York Post last week that the watering down of the screening process is “unacceptable.”
That was also the sentiment shared with The Daily Caller by retired CBP deputy patrol agent in charge J.J. Carrell. He reviewed the April 2023 email sent to about 500 Border Patrol agents and noted the obvious danger in relaxing the vetting process for these illegals.
Carrell declared “this policy change has accelerated the time it takes to process Chinese illegal immigrants — this doesn’t make America safer. The final result is that dangerous illegal immigrants will still be released into the U.S.”
The former agent added that government officials are simply providing cover for themselves to claim the illegals were properly vetted.
Previous standard operating procedure was for agents to spend several hours grilling each potential immigrant. But, as Carrell noted, the new streamlined process allows for many more Chinese migrants to be released into the U.S.
This led, he said, to human smugglers coaching migrants on how to answer the few questions they now face. A former CBP official reported that it is apparent that the new arrivals from China “knew what to say and what not to say.”
And the Biden administration purposefully made the process to gain entry into the U.S. astronomically simpler.
