Trump Must Assess Damage Done by Biden’s ‘CBP One’ Scheme on Security at Border Ports

With the Trump administration in control of DHS, it’s time for the American people to find out how the last administration’s abuse of the CBP One app, which allowed 1,450 illegal migrants per day to access to schedule “interviews” at the Southwest border ports, impacted the ability of CBP officers to prevent drugs, contraband, terrorists, and criminals from entering into the United States. Prepare to be shocked at how adversely this program affected public safety and our national security.

The Role of CBP at the Ports of Entry. For much of the last four years, the media was almost exclusively focused on the Southwest border activities of just one component in U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Border Patrol.

“Border security” under Biden was defined for most by how many illegal migrants Border Patrol agents apprehended. When that apprehension number rose to hundreds of thousands per month, the argument went, the border was insecure. When it fell, President Biden’s supporters claimed, the White House had the situation under control.

That analysis, however, ignored the critical role CBP officers in the agency’s Office of Field Operations (OFO) at the ports of entry play in our national security.

As OFO’s website explains: “U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officers are responsible for America’s border security at ports of entry, safeguarding our country and communities from terrorism, illegal activity, narcotics and human trafficking.”

Most of you have likely never professionally interacted with a Border Patrol agent, but every time you reenter the country at an international airport, disembark from a cruise ship, or cross into the United States from Mexico and Canada, you are greeted by a blue-clad CBP officer.

During those interactions, the officers ask the same seemingly banal questions: How was your trip? Where are you coming from? Did you stop anywhere else? Are you bringing anything back? Where are you going in the United States?

The questions themselves are intended to trigger uneasiness and evasion in entrants with something to hide, and while they are making those inquiries, officers are also running the admission documents you presented against multiple databases to ensure that you do not have dangerous intentions, and are not wanted for any crimes in the United States or elsewhere.

To underscore how critical a role CBP officers play, understand that the September 11th terrorists were unable to crash United Flight 93 into a D.C. target (either the White House or the Capitol) because Immigration Inspector Jose Melendez-Perez had concerns and stopped “20th hijacker” Mohamed al-Kahtani from entering at Orlando International on August 4, 2001.

The CBP One App Interview Scheme. The Biden administration faced increasing public scrutiny in December 2022 as Border Patrol agents at the Southwest border apprehended more than 222,000 illegal migrants — up to that point, an all-time monthly apprehension record.

In response, on January 5, 2023, the White House issued a “fact sheet” announcing it would allow illegal migrants in central and northern Mexico to use the CBP One app (originally intended to expedite the entry of legitimate travelers) to schedule interviews at the Southwest border ports — despite the fact that they had no admission documents and thus no right to come to the United States.

I dubbed that plan the “CBP One app interview scheme”, and there’s no authorization for it anywhere in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). And while the White House “fact sheet” announcing that scheme contended that it would allow illegal migrants to “initiate a protection claim”, CBP officers never asked applicants whether they came seeking asylum.

By May 2023, DHS was making 1,000 CBP One app port appointment slots available daily, but on June 1, 2023, the agency expanded that to 1,250 daily appointment slots. Later that month, the number of daily CBP One port interview appointments was expanded further, to 1,450 — or 529,000-plus planned illegal encounters per year.

The entire scheme was surrounded by a shroud of official secrecy, but congressional investigations did reveal that: “Overall, 95.8 percent of all inadmissible aliens who scheduled appointments through the app during this time were ultimately issued a Notice to Appear’ (NTA) and released into the United States on parole.”

OFO Southwest Border Port Encounters. The U.S. Southwest border ports are among the busiest in the world. In just the San Diego, Calif., region alone, 17 million-plus travelers — nearly 13 million in vehicles, and another 4.6 million pedestrians — are screened by OFO annually.

Most come for legitimate purposes, but not all. Some are denied admission by CBP officers and are either detained or turned back across the border.

Aliens deemed “inadmissible” by OFO are referred to as “encounters”, and in January 2025 (the last month for which official statistics are available), there were just fewer than 32,350 of them at the Southwest border ports.

That January figure — and every monthly OFO Southwest border encounter total back to at least January 2023 — was inflated by the Biden administration’s CBP One app interview scheme.

Here’s proof: In FY 2022, before the Biden White House started allowing all would-be illegal migrants to schedule interviews using the app, CBP officers at the Southwest border ports encountered just over 172,500 inadmissible aliens — an average of 473 per day.

In FY 2023, OFO Southwest border encounters neared 430,000 (1,178 per day), and in FY 2024, they exceeded 604,000, a daily average of 1,652 encounters.

Even that FY 2022 encounter total was unusually high, because as my colleague Todd Bensman revealed in November 2022 — two months before that White House fact sheet was issued and the scheme publicly announced — Biden’s DHS was already secretly using the app to enable aliens to avoid expulsion under Title 42.

In FY 2019 — the last fiscal year before the Covid-19 pandemic slowed international travel — CBP officers deemed just 126,001 aliens inadmissible at the Southwest border ports (an average of 345 per day), and there were a little over 124,500 OFO Southwest border encounters in FY 2018 (341 per day on average).

Nothing suggests that either the infrastructure at the Southwest border ports or the number of CBP officers assigned to them was expanded to accommodate an additional 1,450 facially inadmissible migrants per day, let alone to account for the space and time needed to interview them all.

That means that CBP officers were pulled off the inspection lines to deal with CBP One applicants, and in turn that the inspections performed on the tens of thousands of other travelers who came through those ports daily were deliberately abridged.

I can promise you that it didn’t take the smugglers and traffickers long to figure out which ports were bearing the brunt of the CBP One app interview scheme and exploit them.

Note that total OFO drug seizures at the Southwest border ports declined from 190,000 pounds in FY 2022 to 176,000 pounds in FY 2023, after the CBP One app interview scheme expanded.

While total seizures at those ports did rise to 212,000 pounds in FY 2024, OFO fentanyl seizures declined during that period (to 18,200 pounds from 23,900 pounds in FY 2023), even as Border Patrol Southwest border seizures of the drug rose modestly (from 2,800 pounds to 2,900 pounds) in the same timeframe.

One of Trump’s first acts was to quickly shut down the CBP One app interview scheme. OFO’s Southwest border encounter statistics for February have yet to be published but expect them to be a fraction of the monthly totals over the past two-plus years.

To prevent a future administration from abusing the inspection process to funnel hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants into the United States, DHS should now perform a forensic analysis to determine the extent to which smugglers and traffickers exploited Biden’s CBP One app migrant scheme to move drugs, contraband, terrorists, and criminals into the United States. I promise you the findings won’t be pretty.