One of the Biden administration’s signature policies with regard to the ongoing invasion at the southern border has been to offer, often retroactively, “temporary protected status” (TPS) to thousands of illegal border-crossers from crime-plagued countries such as Venezuela. One little-discussed consequence of that move has been the way it throws open the door for those foreign nationals to obtain “REAL IDs,” undermining the federal government’s claim that the new form of identification is meant to enhance security.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced in September the government would provide TPS to roughly 472,000 Venezuelans who arrived in the states as of July 31, some illegally. The Biden administration previously granted TPS to more than 242,000 Venezuelans during 2021 and 2022, according to The Associated Press.
Overall, the Biden administration has expanded TPS to cover a total of nearly 700,000 foreign nationals from 16 countries including Yemen, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Somalia, Afghanistan, Burma, Cameroon, Nepal, Nicaragua, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Venezuela, according to the Congressional Research Service.
There’s no question Biden’s policies are welcoming more people than truly deserving refugees. While it’s unknown whether the man who allegedly murdered 22-year-old Laken Riley in Georgia had been granted temporary protected status, he had reportedly entered the country illegally in 2022, originally hailing from Venezuela — during the period in which the Biden administration was granting TPS to Venezuelan migrants.
But that risk doesn’t seem to concern the Biden administration. And by granting TPS to noncitizens, including illegal border-crossers, the Department of Homeland Security has enabled them to obtain REAL IDs.
Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in which the hijackers managed to obtain identification through fraudulent means, the federal government sold the REAL ID Act of 2005 as a means to protect air travel from possible terrorist threats by improving the verification of passengers.
Americans will be required starting in May 2025 to provide a REAL ID in order to board an aircraft. Yet thousands of illegal immigrants are being shipped nationwide via planes once they arrive in the U.S. despite having no photo identification.
And thanks to Biden, some of these illegal immigrants could be obtaining REAL IDs (you know, the things meant to make us safer).
More than a dozen states already allow noncitizens, including illegal immigrants, to obtain a driver’s license. Meanwhile, federal DHS policy stipulates that any state can offer those with TPS a REAL ID.
But TPS includes a sizable number of people who broke the law by crossing the border illegally before the Biden administration offered them temporary protected status — and it has been widely abused.
TPS was initially designed to enable “presidents to let illegal aliens from a country stay here for a limited period of time if there was a natural disaster or civil violence back home that made the country ‘unable, temporarily, to adequately handle the return of its nationals,’” as Mark Krikorian explained in National Review in 2016. But in reality, “No one – not a single person – has ever been made to leave the United States because his TPS ran out.”
Those approximately 700,000 noncitizen residents, which includes people who came here illegally, could obtain a REAL ID. And anytime DMV offices provide illegal immigrants with ID cards, it raises serious questions for election security.
Residents in Illinois expressed concern in September after the state permitted illegal immigrants to obtain drivers licenses. Tazewell County Clerk John Ackerman promised illegal immigrants won’t be erroneously added to voter rolls because local election officials provide further verification of their status, according to ABC 20. But DMVs, which handle the rollout of identification documents including REAL IDs, have long experienced system breakdowns that permit noncitizens to register to vote.
California’s DMV wrongfully enrolled approximately 1,500 people, many of whom were noncitizens, to vote in 2018, as first reported by The Los Angeles Times. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania leftists have been working tirelessly to pass a bill so that illegal immigrants can get driver’s licenses while the state passed legislation implementing automatic voter registration at the DMV. What could possibly go wrong?
Jonathan Marks, Pennsylvania’s then-commissioner for the Bureau of Commissions, Elections and Legislation, told a legislative committee in 2017 that the agency found 544 improper ballots were apparently cast between 2000 and 2017. The agency said the ballots were cast by noncitizen immigrants who claimed they mistakenly registered to vote, The Associated Press reported.
Marks testified a glitch in the state’s transportation department’s “Motor Voter” process was the culprit for illegal registrations.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
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