Two former Biden administration officials responsible for some of the most permissive border policies in American history recently sat down with senior Trump administration CBP officials to discuss suggested changes to the agency's National Targeting Center, the nerve center for screening high-risk travelers entering the United States.
Jason Houser, former ICE Chief of Staff, and Troy Miller, former Acting CBP Commissioner, attended the meeting as part of George Mason University's Rapid Prototyping Research Center, where both now serve on the leadership team. Records reviewed by Breitbart Texas confirmed their participation. A high-level CBP source expressed alarm at their involvement.
The NTC is not a talking point. It is the system that screens travelers before they reach American soil. And the two people now offering recommendations on how to improve it presided over an era in which nearly 100 terrorist watchlist suspects were inadvertently released into the United States at the southwest border, according to a House Judiciary Committee report.
According to Breitbart, Troy Miller's tenure as Acting CBP Commissioner coincided with some of the most consequential policy decisions of the Biden era. Under the direction of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Miller's CBP modified the CBP One mobile application to facilitate a parole program that funneled up to 1,400 migrants daily through land border ports of entry. That program ran for two years before President Trump cancelled it in January 2025.
Then there was the CHNV parole program for Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan nationals, which admitted 532,000 migrants through airports over three years before the Trump administration shut it down.
A high-level CBP source did not mince words about Miller's role:
"Miller worked hand in hand with former DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to streamline the processes that opened the border. His catch phrase of implementing 'decompression' strategies at the border was just a code word for releasing more illegal aliens as quickly as possible."
Jason Houser, meanwhile, has spent his post-government career as one of the most vocal critics of the Trump administration's immigration enforcement. In June 2025, he appeared on MSNBC's Deadline: White House and delivered this assessment of enforcement operations in Los Angeles:
"Let's just level-set this now, the incidents in LA over the last few days is not just over an issue or activity over the last 48 to 72 hours or few days, it is a build up over 100 days now of short sighted sort of, quite frankly racist policies directed by the White House."
He described the Trump administration's deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a known MS-13 gang member now facing human smuggling charges, as "purely political theater." He authored a New York Times editorial describing interior enforcement as dangerous political theater. He alleged that enforcement efforts targeted "non-criminal migrants, sometimes grandmothers, vulnerable populations, children, those that can't even possibly be removed."
The CBP source framed the contradiction plainly:
"There is no one more publicly critical of the Trump administration efforts to enforce immigration laws than Houser, he's appeared time after time alleging the current efforts to arrest illegal aliens are based on skin color and not existing immigration law."
And now he's advising the agency on how to screen high-risk travelers.
The Del Rio crisis of 2021 remains one of the defining disgraces of the Biden border era. More than 30,000 mostly Haitian nationals illegally entered the area. Mayorkas stood before reporters alongside Miller and claimed surprise at the surge, even as he insisted the border was not open to irregular migration.
Then came the Horse Patrol Unit images. Agents on horseback managing the crisis were accused of whipping migrants. The accusation was false. A DHS investigation eventually cleared them. But President Biden pledged he would make the agents "pay," and Vice President Harris joined the chorus of condemnation.
Miller's response at the time was to send an email to CBP employees saying he was "shocked by the images from Del Rio of Horse Patrol Units that have dominated the media in recent days," according to a Fox News report. The agents were placed on leave. They spent months under investigation for doing their jobs.
The CBP source connected the history directly to the present:
"Those agents were placed on leave and endured months of worry after being accused of something they knew they did not do. How someone like Miller, who played such a prominent role in the issue, is now supposed to be trusted to recommend changes to NTC is unbelievable."
Miller sided with the political narrative over his own agents. That decision didn't cost him a career. It landed him a consulting role at a university that partners with large federal contractors.
When Houser testified before Congress in May 2025, Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas confronted him about his New York Times editorial dismissing interior enforcement. Gill asked Houser if he knew who Gilberto Avila-Jara was. Houser apparently did not. Gill informed him that Avila-Jara was an illegal immigrant arrested in April and responsible for more than twenty counts of sex crimes against minors.
Gill's response was direct:
"These were the kind of people that Joe Biden and under your leadership were coming into our country."
The exchange captured something essential. The people who dismiss enforcement as racist theater rarely have to answer for the specific consequences of the policies they championed. Houser wrote the op-ed. Gill brought the receipts.
Both Houser and Miller now operate through George Mason University's Rapid Prototyping Research Center, which partners with large federal contractors. The CBP source speculated that financial incentives may be behind their inclusion in agency discussions, though no specific contracts or dollar amounts have been identified.
The structure is familiar. Former officials leave government, land at institutions with federal contracting relationships, and return to the table as outside advisors. The titles change. The access doesn't. And in this case, the people returning to advise on national security screening are the same ones who oversaw a system that released watchlist suspects into the interior.
Per CBP policy reviewed by Breitbart Texas, Commissioner Rodney Scott is required to be informed of "any headquarters-level meetings, work groups, or programmatic activities involving entities external to CBP." The source confirmed that Scott was aware of the meeting.
Awareness and approval are different things. What remains unclear is whether anyone in the room questioned whether two officials who presided over the largest border breakdown in modern history, who publicly accuse the current administration of racism, and who sided against their own agents during a manufactured scandal, belong anywhere near the systems designed to keep dangerous people out of the country.
The Biden administration spent four years treating the border as a social services intake desk. The people who built that system are now offering advice on how to screen threats at the door. The agents who actually held the line during Del Rio know exactly what that advice is worth.