Nearly 530,000 individuals have entered the United States since the start of last year under an official Biden administration initiative that allows them to directly enter the country and receive humanitarian parole, according to newly released data from Customs and Border Protection.

The agency lets foreigners schedule appointments at ports of entry, including forty-seven American airports with “more locations coming soon,” using a phone app called CBP One. The foreigners are then paroled on two-year humanitarian grants and are allowed to seek work.

The data release indicated that the Department of Homeland Security does not consider such foreigners to be illegal aliens and indeed actively “encourages migrants to utilize lawful processes, rather than taking the dangerous journey to cross unlawfully between the ports of entry, which also carries significant consequences under the United States immigration laws.”

Among the over half a million individuals who were granted parole through the CBP One app are more than 110,000 individuals from Cuba, more than 210,000 individuals from Haiti, more than 93,000 individuals from Nicaragua, and more than 116,000 individuals from Venezuela.

The agency commented that a total of 813,000 individuals have “scheduled appointments to present at ports of entry instead of risking their lives in the hands of smugglers.” CBP One allocates “a percentage of daily appointments” to the earliest registered profiles so that “noncitizens who have been trying to obtain appointments for the longest time are prioritized.”

Controversy about the program comes amid record illegal border crossings under the Biden administration over the last four years, as well as widely reported chaos in small towns such as Springfield, Ohio, which have become home to thousands of immigrants from Central America.