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The Trump Admin Is Making It a Lot Harder for Border-Crossers to Game America’s Asylum System

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A new regulation posted by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security Monday morning seeks to address the ongoing crisis at the southern border by making stricter the eligibility requirements for seeking asylum in the United States.

The rule, which was posted for review on Monday morning and goes into effect Tuesday, specifically deals with the asylum eligibility of “aliens who enter or attempt to enter the United States across the southern land border after failing to apply for protection from persecution or torture while in a third country through which they transited en route to the United States.”

The concept is simple: Where an applicant seeks asylum should be based on where an applicant first finds safety from whatever they’re fleeing, rather than on personal preference of country.

“In sum, this rule provides that, with limited exceptions, an alien who enters or arrives in the United States across the southern land border is ineligible for the discretionary benefit of asylum unless he or she applied for and received a final judgment denying protection in at least one third country through which he or she transited en route to the United States,” the rule reads.

If migrants leave a country in Central America and come to the United States, the new rule says they wouldn’t be eligible for asylum here unless they first went through the asylum application process somewhere along the way and were denied.

The authority for making the rule can be found in section 208 0f the Immigration and Nationality Act, which deals with asylum and refugee status. That section of the INA also gives the attorney general and secretary of homeland security to “the authority to promulgate regulations establishing additional bars on eligibility to the extent consistent with the asylum statute, as well as the authority to establish ‘any other conditions or limitations on the consideration of an application for asylum’ that are consistent with the INA,” according to the new rule.

There are exceptions to these new regulations about eligibility. For example, aliens can apply for deferral of removal under the “Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.” The rule also makes exceptions for victims of human trafficking because they “do not volitionally transit through a third country to reach the United States,” and it also makes exceptions for people who transit through countries that do not recognize international treaties dealing with torture and the proper treatment of refugees.

The rule seeks to cut down on frivolous “credible fear” claims that keep aliens in the United States until their claims for asylum can be heard and ruled on.

“This rule does not change the credible-fear standard for asylum claims,” the document explains, “although the regulation would expand the scope of the inquiry in the process. An alien who is subject to the third-country-transit bar and nonetheless has entered the United States along the southern land border after the effective date of this rule creating the bar would be ineligible for asylum and would thus not be able to establish a ‘significant possibility . . . [of] eligibility for asylum’” under federal law.

Raising the regulatory bar for asylum claims would also help the administration cut down on the total processing time for the claims while sending a message to the rest of the world that America’s asylum policies are not a “get out of jail free” card for otherwise illegal immigration.

“This Rule is a lawful exercise of authority provided by Congress to restrict eligibility for asylum. The United States is a generous country but is being completely overwhelmed by the burdens associated with apprehending and processing hundreds of thousands of aliens along the southern border,” Attorney General William Barr said in a statement. “This Rule will decrease forum shopping by economic migrants and those who seek to exploit our asylum system to obtain entry to the United States—while ensuring that no one is removed from the United States who is more likely than not to be tortured or persecuted on account of a protected ground.”

The rule is what’s known as an interim final rule and will go into effect quicker than a normal federal regulation, which typically takes 60 days after first publication. The rule will go into effect immediately on Tuesday morning. (For more from the author of “The Trump Admin Is Making It a Lot Harder for Border-Crossers to Game America’s Asylum System” please click HERE)

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The First Person to Stand for Our Sovereignty and Laws Against Sanctuary Policies Is… a Democrat?

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We have laws in this country making it illegal for illegal aliens to remain in this country. It’s that simple. They cannot remain here, they cannot work here, and nobody is allowed to induce, encourage, harbor, transport, or shield from detection any illegal immigrant in the act of coming to or remaining in the country. How is it, then, that states, which are often stripped of their rightful powers over marriage and abortion, suddenly become so powerful that they can not only shield aliens from the feds but invite them to work and get benefits? What ever happened to that mighty Supremacy Clause of the Constitution?

That is essentially the question one county clerk in New York is asking following the state’s decision to issue driver’s licenses to those here illegally.

For years, state and federal officials have been openly violating immigration laws to help promote the cause of illegal immigration. It has taken a Democrat official willing to stand up for the rule of law to finally bring this issue to a head. Erie County Clerk Michael Kearns immediately called foul on the decision of the state government by noting that because he is an official charged with issuing driver’s licenses, the new state law would place him at odds with federal law.

Kearns argues that issuing driver’s licenses to illegal aliens would force him to violate federal law (8 U.S.C. § 1324), which makes a felon of anyone who “knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place.” That statute also makes a criminal anyone who “encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law” or anyone who “engages in any conspiracy to commit any of the preceding acts, or aids or abets the commission of any of the preceding acts.”

This law has been on the books in some form since 1891. Section 3 of the 1891 Immigration Act made it a felony to “assist or encourage the importation or migration of any alien by promise of employment” through advertisements. Any alien who came in due to such advertisements was deemed inadmissible, and that law was designed to prevent people from encouraging them.

Clearly, these laws are never followed, as members of Congress transport illegal aliens to the capital and states offer them all sorts of benefits and safe harbor. In this specific case of New York driver’s licenses, Kearns is arguing in a lawsuit before the Western District of New York that “by providing driver’s licenses to individuals illegally in the United States and by prohibiting the disclosure of their records, the Green Light Law shields these individuals from detection and substantially facilities their effort to remain in the United States.”

The Fifth Circuit has ruled that Congress intended for §1324 to “broadly proscribe any knowing or willful conduct fairly within any of these terms that tends to substantially facilitate an alien’s remaining in the U.S. illegally.

What can be more squarely within the statute than offering driver’s licenses and barring disclosure of immigration status? This is what New York’s Green Light Law, which was signed into state law last month, does.

Kearns also noted in the formal complaint that one of the rationales given for the Green Light Law was to “get to and from work” and “ensure that our industries have the labor they need to keep our economy moving.”

There’s just one little problem with that. The entire purpose of the infamous 1986 amnesty bill, Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), was “to combat the employment of illegal aliens. The law specifically makes it “illegal for employers to knowingly hire, recruit, refer, or continue to employ unauthorized workers.”

The American people and the Reagan administration reluctantly went along with the first amnesty based on the promise that the ban on illegal aliens working would prevent the next wave. Now we’ve had wave after wave of illegal immigration because those laws are not enforced, and states are even bragging about facilitating their violation of the law.

Chris Hajec, director of litigation for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, told me that this case is a no-brainer. “A stated purpose of the Green Light law is to help illegal aliens get to and from work. That flies in the face of the purpose that Congress had in making it illegal to hire illegal aliens – to reduce illegal alien employment and shut off the jobs magnet for further illegal entry. When state and federal law are in conflict, federal law wins under the Supremacy Clause.”

What ever happened to the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution – that “the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby”?

These are not just any federal laws placing regulations on Americans. These are foundational sovereignty laws governing the entry of foreigners into the country. Immigration is not only explicitly given over to the federal government, but according to James Madison, it was one of the leading reasons why the Articles of Confederation needed to be swapped out for the new federal union.

An illegal alien first has to violate federal sovereignty – the sovereignty of the whole of the union – before he violates state sovereignty. A state, while definitely reserving the right to protect its own sovereignty, as Justice Scalia strongly asserted, has no power to go in the other direction and violate the federal sovereignty in order to allow illegal aliens to remain in the country, where they are then free to live in any state.

As Mr. Kearns fights a lonely battle on behalf of federal powers, one has to wonder why the Department of Justice is not leading the way. (For more from the author of “The First Person to Stand for Our Sovereignty and Laws Against Sanctuary Policies Is… a Democrat?” please click HERE)

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Will the Desecration of the American Flag at ICE Facility Turn the Tide of the Border Battle?

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The overwhelming majority of Americans, including most swing voters, want Republicans to simply enforce our immigration laws and prioritize the needs of Americans over the desires of illegal aliens. Why won’t they?

Republicans will likely miss the powerful symbolism of illegal alien protesters ripping down the American flag at an ICE facility in Aurora, Colorado, and raising the Mexican flag. For those of us who are veterans of the fight for sovereignty, this act conjured up memories of the 2006 fight over amnesty that conservatives successfully turned into a law to protect sovereignty, a law yet to be enforced by our government.

In 2006, the Left, along with Sen. John McCain and President George W. Bush, tried to repeat the 1986 amnesty for illegal aliens already here. As always, the American people were dead set against it, but they just weren’t activated, because all of the political money and activism is on the other side. That all changed when illegal aliens started publicly attacking our flag, according to Michelle Malkin, who was the leading conservative voice fighting amnesty at the time.

“In the spring of 2006, the illegal alien amnesty mob finally pushed Americans over the edge,” said Malkin in an interview with CR.

“Ethnic grievance-mongers raised the Mexican flag over the American flag flying upside down at Montebello High School in southern California. The flag wars quickly spread to Florida, Texas, Arizona, and my now-adopted home state of Colorado. At the time, I wrote: ‘I predict this stunt will be the nail in the coffin of any guest-worker/amnesty plan on the table in Washington.’ I was right. Thanks to these unbridled displays of anti-American hatred, citizens rose fiercely to the defense of our borders and our laws — and the Bush amnesty plan crashed in flames.”

Malkin noted that “P.R. strategists for the sovereignty saboteurs have tried to clean up their act and dress up their endless amnesty campaigns in red, white, and blue” ever since they made that blunder. “They temporarily put down their foreign flags, stopped wearing their commie Che Guevara T-shirts, and cloaked their radical Reconquista aspirations in the less divisive rhetoric of ‘reform,’ ‘opportunity,’ and DREAMers. But they just can’t help themselves. They can never hide their true colors — and the Mexican flag-raising in Aurora this past weekend proved it. Once again, I predict doom for the border-erasers. They’ve crossed a line that Americans have not, cannot, and will not tolerate.”

What did conservatives get for their efforts in 2006? A mandate for at least 850 miles of double-layer fencing and a requirement that DHS achieve full operational control to prevent all illegal immigration and cartel activity at any land or maritime border within 18 months of passage. It’s just that the law was never implemented.

Moreover, President Bush actually started enforcing interior immigration laws and deporting illegal aliens with 287(g) and the Secure Communities program, where deportations were ramped up, an effort that bore fruit even well into the first term of Obama’s precedency, when we were averaging over 400,000 deportations a year. MS-13 was almost eradicated from the country as a result of this successful push by we the people.

The lesson of the flag is that America can survive a conventional invasion that is eventually repelled. At the “dawn’s early light” of September 14, 1814, despite a 25-hour bombardment of Fort McHenry, Baltimore, by the British navy, “our flag was still there.” There was no Union Jack flying over the fort, despite the superior British firepower. But when our government subverts our sovereignty laws and brings in millions of illegal aliens who then become the most powerful constituency in the country – with the ability to single-handedly command the legislative agenda of the House of Representatives for the month of July – our flag was easily removed from an ICE detention facility and the Mexican flag was raised for several hours.

An invading army is not counted in the census. An invading army does not steal birthright citizenship for their children. An invading army doesn’t sue us in court and change our language, at least not right away.

In that sense, those who recoil when we refer to the border situation as “an invasion” are correct. This is worse than an invasion. It is subtler, yet more enduring and transformational in the long run.

This very point, missed by the political elites, including many so-called conservative political elites, is understood even by many run-of-the-mill Democrat voters. According to a Harvard-Harris poll, by a margin of 2-1, independent and moderate voters want illegal aliens, even those with questionable asylum claims, “immediately turned back” at the border. That view is held even by 44 percent of self-described Hillary Clinton voters.

While Democrats are holding one hearing after another on how they can shield and encourage more illegal immigration at the border, Republicans are missing in action, not holding hearings in the Senate on all the harms illegal aliens are causing Americans. Most Republicans are clamoring to show that they care more about the treatment of the invaders than the constituents they represent because they think the Twitter bubble is representative of American voters’ sentiments on the issue. They are simply wrong.

According to Axios, a recent focus group of 12 swing voters in the swing state of Michigan demonstrated this point. “Immigration came up many times when these swing voters were asked to discuss their top issue heading into the presidential election,” reports Axios. “Their responses sounded a lot like the ‘America First’ message President Trump has been championing.”

This focus group was composed of the quintessential swing voters – people who voted for both Romney (2012) and Hillary (2016) or both Obama (2012) and Trump (2016). What did they find? “Eight of these participants, including one Romney-Clinton voter, agreed with this statement: “When we give migrants food, clothing, toiletries, and shelter, all we’re doing is encouraging more of them to come to the U.S., and we don’t want that.”

In other words, most moderate voters are to the right of even the messaging of the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress.

Among conservative elites in D.C., going after unqualified birthright citizenship for people who break into the country is considered a no-fly zone. For the average American, on the other hand, it is a no-brainer. “We shouldn’t give away our birthright like candy,” said Shawn M. “Meaning that all they have to do is cross the border illegally, pop out a kid, and they’re a U.S. citizen. Two illegals do not a citizen make,” she added.

Indeed, the American people stood defiant against a naval attack by a superpower 200 years ago. They stood for the flag. They certainly won’t be cowed by an invasion of illegal immigration and social transformation without representation. The only question is whether the elites of the bipartisan oligarch in Washington will catch up to the mainstream of American thought. (For more from the author of “Will the Desecration of the American Flag at Ice Facility Turn the Tide of the Border Battle?” please click HERE)

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WATCH: Former ICE Director Stuns Ocasio-Cortez in Fiery Debate on Family Separation

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Calif.) appeared stunned when former ICE Director Thomas Homan hit back hard on the legality of family separations at the border. . .

Ocasio-Cortez pressed him on whether he recommended the family separation policy to former DHS Secretary Nielsen, but he countered that he gave numerous recommendations on how to “secure the border and save lives.” . . .

“If I get arrested for DUI and I have a young child in the car, I’m gonna be separated,” interrupted Homan. “When I was a police officer in New York and I arrested a father for domestic violence, I separated that father from his home.”

“Mr. Homan with all due respect, legal asylees are not charged with any crime,” Ocasio-Cortez replied.

Homan countered by saying that being present in the U.S. without documentation is illegal.

(Read more from “Former ICE Director Stuns Ocasio-Cortez in Fiery Debate on Family Separation” HERE)

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Here’s How Much Deporting Illegal Aliens Saves Americans in Tax Dollars

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Deporting the roughly 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living across the United States saves American taxpayers hundreds of billions in public costs, analysis finds.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is expected to conduct a mass deportation effort next week, where at least 2,000 illegal aliens who have final orders for removal will be arrested, detained, and deported from the U.S.

American taxpayers stand ready to benefit significantly from the deportation of thousands of illegal aliens, all of whom have been ordered deported and have refused to leave.

The latest analysis from the Center for Immigration Studies Director of Research Steven Camarotta compared and contrasted the cost to American taxpayers of millions of illegal aliens living in the U.S. over a lifetime and the cost of deportation.

Based on research from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the cost of illegal aliens to American taxpayers over a lifetime is about $746.3 billion. Compare this to the cost of a single deportation, which is about $10,854 per illegal alien based on Fiscal Year 2016 totals.

Overall, deporting every illegal alien in the country would amount to a cost savings of about $622 billion over the course of a lifetime. This indicates that deporting illegal aliens is six times less costly than what it costs American taxpayers to currently subsidize the millions of illegal aliens living in the U.S. (Read more from “Here’s How Much Deporting Illegal Aliens Saves Americans in Tax Dollars” HERE)

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Here’s How Far from Current Law Our Border Debate Has Shifted

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In 2006, a super-majority of Congress passed the Secure Fence Act. It required that no less than 850 miles of double-layer fencing be constructed on our border. But it also codified a sense of purpose and a clearly defined mission for Border Patrol, to which everyone at the time agreed. It required the secretary of homeland security to “take all actions” necessary within 18 months of passage to “achieve and maintain operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States” (emphasis added). What has ever come of this requirement?

Section 2(b) of the bill defined “operational control” as “the prevention of all unlawful entries into the United States, including entries by terrorists, other unlawful aliens, instruments of terrorism, narcotics, and other contraband.”

What is going on today, a long time after the law’s passage, is the opposite of operational control. The cartels have complete operational control over critical population areas around the Rio Grande River, and illegal immigration, more than ever before, is strategically being used by the cartels for smuggling in narcotics, contraband, and dangerous aliens.

The Secure Fence Act passed the Senate 80-19 on September 14, 2006, with support from Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Dianne Feinstein, among other Democrat luminaries. Even while they were pushing for amnesty that very year for those here illegally who had resided in the country for a long time, everyone universally understood that the border had to be secured from new illegal immigration and cartel activities.

How is it that 13 years later, our border is worse than ever, and these very same politicians now believe our Border Patrol exists for the purpose of processing, caring for, and managing a border invasion rather than repelling it? And how is it that even Republicans are incapable of properly messaging the provisions of current law and the authority of any sovereign nation to deny entry and turn back illegal aliens, especially when they are used as weapons by dangerous cartels?

But this radical shift in mindset is not even 13 years old. When the first wave of Central American children began coming to Texas’ Rio Grande Valley in 2014, Obama shut it down within a few months, even though the magnitude of the problem was a fraction of the crisis today.

Here are the key numbers from the crisis in the spring to summer of 2014: The number of apprehensions spiked to over 57,000 in March and then peaked at 68,804 and 66,541 in May and June respectively. There was a big legislative fight and a lot of coverage over the unaccompanied teens being smuggled in over the summer, and by August, the numbers were below 40,000, where they remained more or less until the final months of Obama’s presidency.

Obama’s border supplemental request at the time called for more funding to “repatriate and reintegrate migrants to Central America” and for a media campaign in Central America to “deliver the message that unaccompanied children are not given a permit to stay in the U.S.” They didn’t just talk about more funding for humanitarian amnesty programs.

In a famous interview with George Stephanopoulos on June 26, Obama said very emphatically, “Do not send your children to the borders. If they do make it, they’ll get sent back. More importantly, they may not make it.”

Rather than virtue-signal over the deaths of migrants and blame them on Border Patrol and ICE, Obama very clearly recognized that their deaths, while tragic, of course, were the result of their own trip and that the way to prevent such tragedy is by not coming in the first place. “Our message absolutely is don’t send your children unaccompanied, on trains or through a bunch of smugglers,” said Obama. “We don’t even know how many of these kids don’t make it, and may have been waylaid into sex trafficking or killed because they fell off a train.”

Fast-forward five years, and we have 10 straight months of 50,000 or more apprehensions and four months of over 100,000, dwarfing the 2014 wave. But it’s worse than just the macro numbers. At the peak of the 2014 wave, the number of family unit apprehensions, which really places a greater strain on Border Patrol, exceeded 12,000 for just two months before being shut down. We have now been at over double that level for 10 consecutive months and, in recent months, over five times that level.

And yet, even Republicans refuse to discuss funding for repatriation. It’s all about the migrants and not concern for Americans, when even Obama had the moral clarity to understand that Americans come first and that to care for migrants, the best recourse is to dissuade them from making the trip. Republicans have no plans to fight for more detention space and deportation funding. They recently passed a bill fueling more catch-and-release, which will pull more agents off the line without a commensurate amount of enforcement funding. They also funded more legal aid for them to litigate their way into the country. And that was considered the conservative bill!

There seems to be a lawyer for every illegal alien desiring to nullify our immigration laws. Why is there nobody in government willing to finally enforce the mandate to “achieve and maintain operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States” and prevent “all unlawful entries into the United States, including entries by terrorists, other unlawful aliens, instruments of terrorism, narcotics, and other contraband”?

We were owed that outcome, the outcome any first world nation should expect, 13 years ago. It’s never too late to fulfil the promise. (For more from the author of “Here’s How Far from Current Law Our Border Debate Has Shifted” please click HERE)

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As ICE Prepares for Raids, Dems Give Legal Advice to Illegal Aliens

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On Thursday, after days of internecine warfare, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez found something they could agree upon: giving legal advice to illegal immigrants as to how they could hide from agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who are scheduled to conduct raids on Sunday in ten major cities across the nation.

Pelosi stated at a press conference: “An ICE deportation warrant is not the same as a deportation warrant. If that is the only document ICE brings to a home raid, agents do not have the legal right to enter a home. If ICE agents don’t have a warrant signed by a judge, a person may refuse to open the door and let them in. An administrative order of removal from ICE or immigration authorities is simply not enough. Families belong together; everyone in our country has rights. Many of these families are mixed-status families.”

Ocasio-Cortez echoed on Twitter, “CE will launch raids across 10 major cities this SUNDAY. Check your neighbors & know your rights. Remember: no one can enter your home without a *judicial warrant.* Sometimes ICE will try to show other papers to get in your house. Judicial warrants are from a court. No matter who you are or what your status is, this is the United States of America – where ALL people have rights. Know yours. Prepare. Visit https://WeHaveRights.US to learn how to handle this & other ICE encounters in multiple languages.”

(Read more from “As Ice Prepares for Raids, Dems Give Legal Advice to Illegal Aliens” HERE)

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Border Apprehensions Drop to Lowest Level in Months

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Apprehensions by Border Patrol agents of migrants who illegally cross the U.S. border with Mexico dropped nearly 29 percent in June, reaching the lowest level since March. The decrease follows seasonal patterns and increased immigration enforcement in Mexico following President Donald Trump’s threat of tariffs.

“Since the administration reached a new agreement with Mexico,” Acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kevin K. McAleenan said in a written statement, “we’ve seen a substantial increase in the number of interdictions on the Mexican southern border.

The apprehension of migrants illegally crossing the U.S. border from Mexico dropped from 132,880 in May to 94,897 in June. This represents a decrease of 28.6 percent, according to the Southwest Border Migration Report released on Wednesday afternoon by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The biggest drop in apprehensions came in the categories of family units and unaccompanied minors. The apprehension of these two categories fell from 95,890 in May to 64,767 in June — a 32.5 percent drop. Single adults also dropped from 36,900 to 30,130 — an 18.3 percent drop. . .

“This year’s decline in apprehensions from May to June outpaces last year’s decline by 11 percent,” the acting DHS secretary explained. “The reduction in apprehensions accounts for decreases across all demographics, including unaccompanied minors, family units and single adults, as well as decreases in migrants from all Northern Triangle countries, particularly those coming from Guatemala.” (Read more from “Border Apprehensions Drop to Lowest Level in Months” HERE)

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Governor Signs Bill Extending Health Care to Illegal Aliens

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On Tuesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law State Bill 104, which now extends health care benefits to illegal immigrants between the ages of 19-25, in addition to the law that already had guaranteed coverage to illegal immigrants under the age of 19. . .

The bill states:

The federal Medicaid program prohibits payment to a state for medical assistance furnished to an alien who is not lawfully admitted for permanent residence or otherwise permanently residing in the United States under color of law.

Existing law requires that individuals under 19 years of age enrolled in restricted-scope Medi-Cal at the time the Director of Health Care Services makes a determination that systems have been programmed for implementation of these provisions be enrolled in the full scope of Medi-Cal benefits, if otherwise eligible. Existing law requires the department to maximize federal financial participation in implementing the provisions.

This bill would extend eligibility for full-scope Medi-Cal benefits to individuals 19 to 25 years of age, inclusive, and who are otherwise eligible for those benefits but for their immigration status. This bill would additionally require the department to claim federal financial participation to the extent that the department determines it is available, and to the extent that federal financial participation is not available, would require the department to use state funds. Because counties are required to make eligibility determinations and this bill would expand Medicaid eligibility, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

(Read more from “Governor Signs Bill Extending Health Care to Illegal Aliens” HERE)

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President Trump Should Set the Refugee Cap for 2020 at ZERO

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If over one million people are coming straight to our border this year, much of it fueled by quasi-asylum policies, why should we willingly bring in more people through a separate refugee program? The president should pose that question to the American people and then should announce a cap of zero for annual refugee intake in fiscal year 2020.

The Refugee Act of 1980 [8 U.S.C. §1157(a)(2)] grants the president the sole authority to set the annual cap for refugee intake. He only needs to “consult” with the Senate and House Judiciary committees, but they have no veto power over his decision without changing the law. Thus, there is nothing stopping the president from setting the cap at zero when the State Department sends the annual written report to Congress roughly two months from now.

To his credit, the president did reduce the cap to 45,000 in FY 2018 and 30,000 in FY 2019. So far, for the first three quarters of this fiscal year, 21,604 refugees have been processed. That is a sharp drop from the standard 70,000 cap for most of the past few decades and from the 110,000 cap Obama set in his final year in office. However, with everything going on at the border, it is simply indefensible to bring in more refugees when our system can’t handle the quasi-asylum invasion at our border. Dropping the number of refugees by 80,000 or so is nothing when we have one million people coming to our border.

Whether you believe in holding the line at the border or in processing more catch-and-release for amnesty at the border, either way, we need every resource we have among immigration officers trained in asylum adjudication and processing to deal with the border. Every employee of USCIS needs to be working on clearing the existing backlog in the system being driven by the border invasion. While 30,000 refugees doesn’t sound like a lot based on historical trends, all those employees who would be diverted to that process next year should be marshalled to combat the border crisis.

The refugee program is broken beyond repair anyway, and any sane government official would admit that it should be suspended while we deal with our broken border. We spend 12 times as much money resettling migrants in America as it would cost to resettle them in their own regions. Moreover, as Christians and Jews in the Middle East are becoming extinct, much of the resettlement program has become a fundamental transformation of America by bringing in thousands of non-assimilating Muslims engaged in protracted sectarian civil wars. The cost to Americans in terms of welfare, security, and culture is staggering — and it all enriches self-promoting and parasitic refugee contractors.

Moreover, it’s important to remember that much of the border crisis is already straining the refugee resettlement program under the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The thousands of Central American children smuggled in by illegal alien families are all being processed and resettled just like the refugees we choose to admit from other parts of the world. It’s unfair for the agency and its advocates to double-dip. If we are experiencing record resettlement of Central American kids, which is bankrupting the agency, then there is no reason to electively add more to the program.

Finally, there is also another refugee program not subject to the annual caps, the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program, which has continued to grow under the Trump administration. It seems like the only purpose of our military remaining in Afghanistan is to bring in families of those who supposedly helped us in the dubious mission, which runs completely counter to the entire purpose of the War on Terror and the impetus for 9/11 (protecting America from dangerous immigrants). Since Trump took office, the State Department has admitted over 30,000 SIVs from Afghanistan and close to 10,000 from Iraq.

Bottom line? There’s no reason to have a separate refugee program when our entire border and immigration system has become one mass fraudulent refugee system. (For more from the author of “President Trump Should Set the Refugee Cap for 2020 at Zero” please click HERE)

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