Just five months before Luis Miguel Calzadilla-Rojas — a Venezuelan migrant and alleged Tren de Aragua gangbanger — was arrested after a shooting outside a probation office in Aurora, Colorado, he was welcomed into the US — thanks to a controversial immigration program launched by the Biden-Harris administration.
Calzadilla-Rojas entered the country using CBP One — an app that is designed to allow asylum seekers a legal pathway to entry into America.
He’s just one of 1.3 million migrants who have come into the country through legal routes created by the Biden-Harris admin in less than two years.
The programs were created unilaterally, without Congressional approval or input.
Homeland Security sources tell The Post that there’s almost no vetting involved for most migrants, especially if their home countries — including Venezuela, Haiti and Cuba — refuse to cooperate with American law enforcement.
“It doesn’t surprise me that gang members get in so easily and frequently,” one source recently told The Post.
Calzadilla-Rojas isn’t the only one to slip through the very large cracks in the CBP One program.
Three suspected ISIS members from Tajikistan arrested by federal authorities in June had used the Biden-Harris app to enter the US, according to data the Department of Homeland Security provided to the House Judiciary Committee.
The program also allowed in two other suspected Tren de Aragua gang members who were busted in connection with an attempted murder in Aurora in late July.
The Biden-Harris administration introduced the CBP One app entry program in January 2023, which Biden claimed would help control the number of migrants crossing the border illegally.
Using the app, migrants can book appointment with immigration officials, who will review their requests to enter the US. They must be outside the US — usually just across the border in Mexico — to apply.
By giving would-be asylum seekers a pathway to legally enter the US, he argued at the time, they could be screened and would not have to avail themselves of cartels-backed people smugglers.
But critics — including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton who sued over the policy — argued the Biden-Harris administration was “inviting illegal aliens to cross the border.”
And what followed was a massive surge in illegal border crossings with more than 2 million people surging into the US between February 2023 and April 2024— topping out at 117,000 in May of this year alone.
Since January 2023, the app has allowed roughly 813,000 migrant to enter the US via ports of entry at the southern border.
The high demand for entry using CBP One has recently pushed the government of Mexico to begin busing migrants to the US border to help them reach their CBP One appointments more quickly.
Along with CBP One, the Biden administration has been allowing 30,000 Cuban, Haitian, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan migrants into the US via commercial flights. In total, 530,000 migrants have successfully arrived to the US on those flights.
The flight program recently had to be paused over massive amounts of fraud, but is currently back up and running.
Combined, the programs have allowed 1.3 million migrantsx into the US.
While the entry programs continue to usher in thousands of migrants into the US each month, the Biden-Harris administration has been claiming success at the border. Illegal crossings have dropped to the lowest levels since Biden took office following new last-minute restrictions on asylum.
Following three years of record illegal crossings, Border Patrol encounters dropped to roughly 83,000 in June, 56,000 in July and 58,000 in August, per federal data.
“CBP continues to enforce the Securing the Border interim final rule and deliver strong consequences for illegal entry, and encounters between ports of entry remain at their lowest level in years,” The Biden administration’s acting chief of Customs and Border Protection, Troy Miller, said in a recent statement.
The controversial CBP One app has drawn the ire of Republicans arguing its legalizing migrants who have no legal claim to be in the US.
Former President Donald Trump recently pledged to “terminate the Kamala phone app for smuggling illegals (CBP One App).”
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green opened a hearing on the border Wednesday, calling the Biden-Harris administration’s entry programs a “shell-game” that is part of “a sleight of hand to skew the numbers.”
And critics say that recent arrests of gang members and terror suspects show that CBP One isn’t making the border any safer.
When Calzadilla-Rojas used the CBP One app, he entered the US at the Paso Del Norte port of entry in El Paso, Texas, in August 2023, Homeland Security sources said.
Officers processing Calzadilla-Rojas ran required background checks, but didn’t find anything on him — likely because there is no information sharing between the US and Venezuela, sources said.
He was then allowed into the country as a parolee for a period of two years with the opportunity to argue for an extended stay at a court hearing in April 2026, sources added.
But Calzadilla-Rojas would go on to be one of 10 members of the violent Venezuelan street gang nabbed in a Jan. 3 shooting in the migrant hotbed of Aurora, Colorado, in front of the Arapahoe County Probation Office, police said.
He has since been labeled by the Aurora Police Department as a “documented member of TdA.”
When he entered the US, Calzadilla-Rojas told the feds he would be living in Madison, Wisconsin. He was arrested nearly 1,000 miles away outside Denver — one of the Venezuelan gang’s biggest strongholds in the US.
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