A House Republican was outraged to learn that customs officials at land ports of entry did not often screen people in cars at the top of the Biden-era border crisis and said the decision not to do so represented a” full loss” in national security.
During a legislative hearing Tuesday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA ) asked an official from the Department of Homeland Security‘s Office of Inspector General about its 2024 research that found U. S. Customs and Border Protection had allowed officers to halt testing protocols for individuals seeking entrance to the United States, which is permitted on rare occasions.
” In a 2024 OIG statement, CBP was not electronically verify the identity of all people seeking entry in cars at land ships of entry”, Greene said in a House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability hearing on waste and abuse at the DHS under former President Joe Biden.
” We knew that CBP wasn’t verifying the names of individuals crossing the border in between ports of entry, but they weren’t even able to fully recognize individuals at ports of entry in vehicles”, said Greene. ” That would be like us opening up our windows to our house, opening up our windows, and not checking to see who’s coming in with our kids in our house”.
In a June 2024 inspection by the DHS OIG, researchers found that ports of entry had “inconsistent” methods when choosing whether to ask passengers in vehicles for verification or personal knowledge, allowing a countless number of unprotected people to enter the land at more than 100 area ports of entry nationwide.
” On occasion ,]U. S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Field Operations officers ] would forego screening passengers”, testified Kristen Bernard, the deputy inspector general within the Office of Audits at the DHS OIG.
” So if there was a backlog of high volume of travelers coming across the port of entry, they may waive the screening of the passenger and only do the driver”, Bernard said.
” So to increase people coming, let’s move the traffic along”, Greene said. ” Yeah, that’s a complete failure”.
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During Biden’s single term, CBP officers encountered 11 million immigrants attempting to enter the country without authorization, including at ports of entry. CBP officers at the ports of entry were frequently pulled from their booths to help Border Patrol agents between the ports of entry.
That figure does not include illegal immigrants who entered between the ports of entry and managed to slip past law enforcement and make it into the interior of the U. S.
