A nation cannot simultaneously tolerate mass unlawful entry for years and then pretend it has the infrastructure to reverse it overnight. As angry protests target Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities and political inaction continues in Washington, millions of people inside our borders face a compounding crisis of legal uncertainty. ICE personnel are caught in the crossfire, tasked with executing massive congressional mandates that are running into a wall of legal and logistical realities.

What advocates and politicians on both sides fail to consider is that a significant percentage of recent arrivals may have grounds to challenge the status of “illegal” because many feel that they arrived at the explicit invitation of the federal government. That invitation was implied by the Biden administration through state-sponsored mobile applications, financial assistance, free housing, interstate transit, and various other agency support services upon arrival, shifting the narrative from “illegal” to “undocumented.”