The program follows President Joe Biden’s pledge to accommodate up to 100,000 people fleeing war-torn Ukraine through various legal routes and will focus on family reunification. More than two weeks after that announcement, the government is yet to release more details, and hundreds of Ukrainians have decided to head to the US-Mexico border to enter the country.
The new parole program, which could begin as early as next week, is designed to help people interested in entering the United States and allow them temporary residency in the country. According to an administration official, individuals would have to have a sponsorship application completed on their behalf by someone in the US in order to enter the country. Details of the plan are still being worked out.
The State Department and the Department of Homeland Security are involved in the program, according to the administration official. The approach is similar to that of the Afghans after the fall of Kabul.
CNN reached out to the White House for comment. The State Department referred CNN to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not immediately return a request for comment.
Since Biden announced last month he would welcome up to 100,000 Ukrainians, officials have been discussing how best to prioritize applicants, including housing for refugees fleeing possible persecution, according to a person familiar with the deliberations.
An official said the White House is partially focused on protecting vulnerable refugees, including those with special medical needs or those from third countries who have already fled to Ukraine to avoid persecution elsewhere — including dissidents, journalists and LGBTQ people .
The political process, including what mechanism people fleeing Ukraine could use to come to the United States, has been a topic of conversation among government officials since the president’s announcement.
Still, Biden’s advisers continue to believe that most of the more than 4 million people who have fled Ukraine would prefer to remain in the region. The 100,000 figure that Biden revealed during a visit to Brussels in March does not necessarily reflect the number of refugees that US officials believe will eventually seek entry into the United States, an official said.
The US has allocated billions of dollars in humanitarian aid to help countries neighboring Ukraine – including Poland, which Biden visited with refugees and aid workers last month.
On Monday, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi met with National Security Council officials at the White House to discuss Europe’s refugee crisis. He also met with Foreign Minister Antony Blinken on Tuesday.
The usual path of refugee resettlement to the United States is a slow and cumbersome process that often takes years. In March, only a dozen Ukrainians came to the US through the program, and they had probably applied years ago, well before Russia invaded Ukraine.
Dozens of Ukrainians are often relocated to the US on a monthly basis, but the closure of commercial airspace in war-torn Ukraine has resulted in canceled flights and discouraged Ukrainians from coming to the US as refugees, refugee advocates say. Their flights are gradually being rebooked from other countries.
In a recent bipartisan letter, lawmakers, mostly Democrats, suggested the government should also “use existing administrative options to improve efficient processing for Ukrainians outside the United States who are already eligible for immigration benefits.” That includes, lawmakers said, providing additional resources for U.S. embassy staff in Europe involved in processing immigrants and refugees and waiving immigration application fees.
Refugee advocates, who are closely involved in refugee resettlement, have expressed concern about the inclusion of Ukrainians on probation because it prevents them from accessing refugee services.
“They are inventing this new approach through probation, which has no security, no safety net, and that’s worrying and leaves the applicant at the mercy of the backlog and the broken asylum system if they want to stay here permanently,” said Mark Hetfield. President and CEO of HIAS, a refugee resettlement organization.
The challenge some Ukrainians face when entering the US through an existing legal route is reflected in part at the US-Mexico border. Hundreds of people gathered there to enter the United States via a port of entry and possibly be paroled to the United States.
Nearly 3,000 Ukrainians entered the United States at the US-Mexico border in a week, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told CBS News last week.
“What we are doing on an individual basis is evaluating whether a Ukrainian family, and frankly other families from other countries, are eligible for our discretionary authority to grant parole on humanitarian grounds,” Mayorkas said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has dispatched additional officers to the San Ysidro port of entry, near the Mexican border city of Tijuana, to help with processing, according to the agency.
For those already in the United States, the Department of Homeland Security expanded a form of humanitarian assistance — known as temporary protected status — to allow Ukrainians to remain in the United States without fear of deportation if they lose that status. Lawmakers asked Biden to extend that status to newcomers as well. Currently, Ukrainians have had to be in the US since March 1 to be eligible.
CNN’s Jennifer Hansler contributed to this report.