Biden Oversees Record Border Crossers in U.S. with Unresolved Asylum Claims, Outpacing Populations of 11 States; More Than 1.6 Million Pending Asylum Applications: How Biden is Breaking Our Humanitarian Protection System, and Trying to Hide the Damage

Biden Oversees Record Border Crossers in U.S. with Unresolved Asylum Claims, Outpacing Populations of 11 States:

Under President Joe Biden’s watch, now more than 1.6 million border crossers are in the United States with unresolved asylum claims. The majority, based on federal data, will have their asylum claims denied.

The data, reviewed and published by Andrew Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), reveals the extent to which Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is carrying out an expansive catch and release network, releasing tens of thousands of border crossers into the U.S. interior every month — most with dubious asylum claims.

As of March, there are now more than 1.6 million border crossers in the U.S. with unresolved asylum claims, Arthur details:

That’s more applicants that residents in 11 U.S. states, and an insurmountable burden for adjudicators, as the Biden administration has effectively broken the asylum system, and seeks to hide the damage. [Emphasis added]

According to Arthur, “Biden’s DHS has released nearly every alien [Customs and Border Patrol] has encountered at the southwest border.” In hundreds of thousands of cases, border crossers in the U.S. will not have their claims adjudicated for nearly a decade. —>READ MORE HERE

More than 1.6 Million Pending Asylum Applications:

How Biden is breaking our humanitarian protection system, and trying to hide the damage

Halfway through FY 2023 (through March) there were a total of more than 1.6 million pending asylum applications in the United States, in two different buckets: nearly 800,000 “defensive” asylum claims awaiting adjudication before fewer than 650 immigration judges in the nation’s immigration courts, with the other 842,000 being “affirmative” asylum applications in the USCIS backlog for decisions by fewer than 850 asylum officers, as my colleague Elizabeth Jacobs recently reported. That’s more applicants that than residents in 11 U.S. states, and an insurmountable burden for adjudicators, as the Biden administration has effectively broken the asylum system, and seeks to hide the damage.

The Immigration Courts

When I left the bench in January 2015, there were just fewer than 210,000 pending asylum claims, which seemed like a lot, given that I was one of 250-plus immigration judges. The immigration courts had several advantages then that they lack now, however.

The first was that my fellow immigration judges and I did a pretty good job of handling the flow. In FY 2015, just over 64,000 new applications came in the door, but thanks to the rate at which we were adjudicating cases, they added just about 40,000 claims to the backlog. That was not great, but it was manageable.

By contrast, more than 256,000 asylum applications were filed with the immigration courts in FY 2022, and you can add 196,000 more that were filed in the first six months of FY 2023 – at a rate six times as high as nine years prior.

The question why so many more asylum claims are being filed with the immigration courts now brings me to the second advantage immigration judges had in FY 2015: The Obama administration kept new border claims down by detaining most illegal entrants.

In a June 2022 filing with the Supreme Court, DOJ was forced to admit that the Biden administration’s border release policies were different than those of prior administrations – drastically different.

In FY 2015, for example, 66 percent of all aliens encountered by CBP at the Southwest border were detained through the removal process, 19 percent more were detained for at least a while before they were released, and just 14 percent were never detained.

By FY 2021 – Biden’s first partial year in office – those numbers had flipped, as the current administration detained just 10 percent of aliens encountered at the Southwest border throughout the removal process, and 64 percent were never detained.

So, you may ask, what does detention have to do with the rate at which asylum claims are filed and adjudicated at the immigration courts? Everything, and you can trust me because I was in a detained court – where those who appeared before me were in detention. —>READ MORE HERE

Source