We have word from the White House that, perhaps as early as today, President Trump will take action to ensure asylum is not a free pass to cross our borders illegally. We applaud President Trump’s decision to use the authorities granted to him by the Immigration and Nationality Act to end the gaming of our dysfunctional immigration system.We have word from the White House that President Trump will take action to ensure asylum is not a free pass to cross our borders illegally without consequence.
Our sources at the White House tell us that President Trump will use the authority granted to him by the Immigration and Nationality Act to manage and protect the integrity of our immigration system and our national sovereignty.
Just this June, the Supreme Court upheld the President’s broad statutory authority to implement entry restrictions and we are told President Trump will sign a proclamation declaring that migrants seeking asylum along the southern border must present themselves lawfully at a port of entry.
We are also told those who arrive at a port of entry will remain eligible for asylum and so additional resources are being deployed to support our ports of entry.
There has been an overwhelming surge in aliens from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador (the Northern Triangle) arriving at our border to claim credible fear of persecution. Nearly two-thirds of aliens who claim credible fear are from the Northern Triangle. However, most migrants from the Northern Triangle do not have valid asylum claims, but they are released into the country because our asylum system has become overwhelmed.
Asylum seekers know they will be released into the country and receive work permits while their often-meritless claims go through our backlogged immigration courts. Aliens are often coached to repeat the “magic words” to meet the initial low bar for credible fear of persecution.
Prior to 2013, around 1 in every 100 arriving aliens claimed credible fear and sought asylum, but today that number has spiked to 1 in 10. These claims have jumped by around 1,700 percent in the last nine years.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are jointly issuing a new rule to ensure aliens who are subject to the kind of proclamation that the President issues are not eligible for asylum. The new joint rule, when paired with the Presidential proclamation, means that any alien who illegally enters our country will be ineligible for asylum.
Last year, nearly half of the completed cases that involved aliens who claimed credible fear resulted in the alien failing to show up at a hearing or even to file an application for asylum.
The reason it is so important to stop illegal aliens at the border is obvious – liberal immigration judges routinely grant asylum requests on the thinnest evidence and a huge percentage of illegal aliens who are released simply refuse to show-up for their hearings knowing that no one will make an effort to find them and compel them to appear.
We applaud President Trump’s decision to use the authorities granted to him by the Immigration and Nationality Act to issue a proclamation limiting asylum claims to only those arriving at the ports of entry and we urge him to continue to use his authority under the act to further limit meritless asylum claims and other gaming of our dysfunctional immigration system.