By most estimates, the total number of illegal migrants that have been allowed into the United States during the Biden border crisis is currently at or near ten million. Many Americans are fervently hoping to see Donald Trump return to office next year for a variety of reasons, but particularly because he has promised to begin detaining and deporting them in the largest mass deportation effort ever seen. But that may not be possible with all of them. Nearly half a million of them were brought into the country under Joe Biden's Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan (CHVN) parole program. According to some immigration analysts who spoke to the New York Post this week, most of those people will very likely refuse to go home after two year and they will wind up staying here "forever." 

The roughly 400,000 migrants allowed into the US under the Biden administration’s Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan [CHVN] parole program will most likely stay in the US indefinitely, several experts told The Post

The program first began in October 2022 for Venezuelans and was expanded in November 2023 to allow 30,000 migrants per month to enter the US for up to two years “for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”

Department of Homeland Security data revealed 400,000 migrants have taken advantage of the program by the end of February.

All of those hundreds of thousands of migrants are technically "on parole" for two years. After that, they have the options of asking DHS to extend their parole, hiring an attorney to establish legal residency, or going home. Few are expected to simply leave after they've been here for a couple of years. If they can't achieve one of the first two options I mentioned, many will simply remain here illegally.

We can rest assured that Joe Biden isn't going to direct DHS to start deporting people. It was his plan from the beginning to bring them here. And, as one authority told the Post, they are overwhelming the system entirely. This is almost certainly happening by design. Even if Trump manages to replace Biden and he honestly wants to ship them all out, there very likely are simply not enough resources to find and transport them all. 

ICE currently doesn't prioritize looking for people based solely on the fact that they've overstayed their parole. They are looking for illegal aliens who have committed the worst crimes while in the country. Those priorities are unlikely to change even if Trump appoints new people to oversee the process. Again... Biden has simply let in so many people that the system is overwhelmed. There will not be anywhere near enough money in the budget to expand ICE to the point where they could do it all even if a sufficient number of qualified people were available to take the jobs. (There will not be, just for the record.)

Illegal aliens who are identified but don't make it onto the priority list are added to what is known as the "non-detained ICE docket." That means their names are in the system, but they are not actively pursued by agents unless and until they are arrested on serious charges. One former ICE field office director told the Post that there are currently approximately seven million names listed on that docket. And that doesn't include all of the gotaways and those that presented false identification when entering the country. 

I hate being the bearer of bad news, but we really need to be realistic about all of this. Just electing Donald Trump will not be enough. Even if he can completely seal the border as soon as he takes office (something he has promised to do), he won't be able to remove all of those people immediately. He probably won't be able to do it given four full years. There is a massive amount of work ahead of us and fixing the damage that Joe Biden has done is going to require persistence and patience.