Dear Committee Members, specifically Chairman Green,

I would like to know why, in numerous published statements, Chairman Green has claimed that Anna Giaritelli published a “groundbreaking scoop showing that the criminal cartels had hijacked the CBP One app using virtual private networks (VPNs), and were exploiting the app to make even more money by scheduling appointments for migrants outside the geographical range.”

This is clearly and obviously false to anyone who reads the article. What Giaritelli wrote wasn’t a “groundbreaking scoop,” but rather a baseless claim. At no point in the article does Giaritelli cite a single source confirming that cartels are exploiting CBP One using VPNs.

She refers to “an extensive investigation” of DHS documents, but she doesn’t link to the documents, or quote them, or even say what they specifically address. That’s the closest she comes to providing any evidence whatsoever.

The one quote she provides from an actual DHS official (Erin Waters, Assistant Commissioner for Public Affairs) is refuting Giartitelli’s claim, stating that CBP One has actually been “bad for cartels and other criminal organizations seeking to exploit migrants.” Waters goes on to explain that CBP One rather relies on the location data supplied by devices used to access the app.

I would like to know if the Committee has ever spoken with Erin Waters on this issue– and if not, why not? Why rely on the bald assertions of a right-wing web site over a statement of fact from a DHS official?

At the very least, the obvious contradiction presented here should give the Committee pause, and encourage you to look into the claim further. But apparently the Committee had no time to even take a second look, in your rush to– again, repeatedly– make such a momentous claim, with such an extensive impact. You clearly think this matter is serious, so why are you relying on what amounts to rumors and gossip rather than statements of fact supported by evidence?

Could it possibly be that it’s because the rumors and gossip align with your pre-existing beliefs? That evidence be damned when it contradicts your desire to believe?

If so, that’s grossly irresponsible– not to mention dangerous– behavior on the part of a legislative committee. Misrepresenting the truth gets people killed, and yet you treat this reality with casual disregard.

I dearly hope that I’ve simply missed something here which exculpates Chairman Green’s statements about CBP One– and if I have, then assuredly I’m not the only one. So if you have actual evidence that doesn’t come from a vague and unsupported Washington Examiner article, please post it. I’d still be baffled to why you didn’t just provide that evidence in the first place rather than linking to the Examiner, but perhaps that’s a lesson that can be retained for future statements.

Thanks for your time and consideration on this matter.

For over a year now, the committee has been making hay about this so-called “bombshell report” that doesn’t show what they keep insisting that it shows. This line in particular is revealingly hilarious:

Since the Biden administration debuted the CBP One app in January, immigrants south of Mexico City had no reason to believe they would find a legal way to get into the U.S. if they crossed illegally.

1. The app debuted in October of 2020 (under Trump, btw), not January of 2023.
2. Using the app is, by definition, not crossing the border illegally.
3. CBP One is a legal way– unfortunately for most migrants, the only legal way– to enter the United States.

Republicans are tossing around a lot of terminology to obfuscate 2 and 3. The term “otherwise inadmissible” is a fun one, because it suggests that migrants would fall afoul of other immigration restrictions and be denied entry without using the app.

What’s the basis for this? There is none, and in fact the app’s facial recognition engine is designed to be a screen to prevent such individuals from entering the country before they can even reach the border. It does this by comparing the face captured within the app to templates from DHS’s HART database, which includes records of an individual’s entire history of encounters at the border, as well as any crimes committed.

Once again, as I pointed out in CBP One™: The Border in Your Pocket: the app isn’t designed to let as many people through as possible; it’s designed to make the lives of CBP officials and agents easier. Their lives are easier if they can gather as much information about the migrants as possible, as soon as possible, to minimize the seemingly endless paperwork and stress that comes from trying to process the entirety of someone’s information on the spot, all at once, at the border.

(Yes, I sound very sympathetic to CBP agents here. Am I? No, but I can empathize with their openly acknowledged wish to automate things to the extent that they can be).

Last September, Chairman Green and Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement Chairman Clay Higgins “demanded answers” from DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about cartels “abusing the Biden administration’s expanded use of the CBP One app to enhance their human smuggling operations.”