What percentage of illegal aliens crossing the border are claiming asylum? Eighty percent? Fifty? That’s what you’d think from listening to the news and the politicians. But what if I told you it could be lower than ten percent?

The prevailing narrative about our border is that the surge in illegal immigration is dominated by Central American family units who instantly assert a “credible fear” of persecution and are immediately processed as asylum seekers and released into our interior with the faint hope that they will show up to a court hearing, where their claim will likely be turned down. While it is likely that the perception of bogus asylum claims as the key to obtaining release into our country is what motivated this wave originally, it appears that few of them are even asserting a bogus credible fear at all. Yet, we are still processing them as if they are legitimate asylees instead of immediately placing them into expedited removal, as required by law.

On Monday, Carl Landrum, deputy chief patrol agent of the Yuma Sector, released a surprising piece of information on Fox News that fundamentally upends the public perception at the border, a fact that would even surprise most in government. “Only six percent of the people crossing the border are expressing a credible fear and requesting asylum,” said Agent Landrum, regarding the Yuma Sector specifically.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has declined to answer my request for similar data for other border sectors.

Yuma is one of the sectors where we are seeing large family units from Central America cross almost daily. A whopping 24,198 individuals in family units have been apprehended in Yuma for the first six months of fiscal year 2019, up from 6,487 in FY 2018. Yuma is the third-hardest-hit sector, behind the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso sectors, so the fact that we have it from the deputy chief patrol agent that only six percent of overall apprehensions in that sector are even expressing a credible fear is earth-shattering and has disturbing ramifications.

This revelation means that our government has essentially vitiated the entire Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and has declared a de facto open border. This is not just about the erroneous interpretation of asylum law. We are shredding every word of the INA and processing and releasing almost all of these people, even those who don’t express a credible fear, rather than immediately placing them in expedited deportation.

It’s true that more people will likely express a “credible fear” if we were to do that, but that assertion should be denied, starting a maximum seven-day clock for an appeal. Thereafter, they can be returned to expedited removal, and no immigration judge, much less an Article III judge, can get involved in any way. That is current law, and no new law can be written more emphatically than the one on the books.

The problem is that at this point, they are all being released, and that clock is never starting. Therefore, even if we track them down later on, they can always reassert their claim at that point and further delay deportation.

I first started to suspect that most of the families were not asserting a credible fear when I examined the USCIS credible fear caseload data for the first four months of the fiscal year. USCIS has received 35,310 credible fear cases for the first four months of this fiscal year. That is a high number, but that is roughly on pace for the same high baseline of FY 2018, when we hit nearly 100,000 cases. We are on pace for about 106,000 claims this year.

One would expect with our border numbers crushing those from last year that, if it’s being driven primarily by asylum requests of Central American families, the dockets would swell even over last year’s numbers. That is simply not the case. There’s been a 370 percent increase in family units for the first half of this fiscal year compared with the first half of FY 2018. The one caveat is that the USCIS credible fear caseload data for February and March, the two busiest months, has not yet been published, but based on what we see for the first four months, it’s clear that credible fear cases are in no way increasing commensurate to the increase of family units coming in.

Furthermore, data from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) also confirms this trend. In an analysis titled, “Newly Arriving Families Not Main Reason for Immigration Court’s Growing Backlog,” TRAC asserts, “Since September, about one out of every four newly initiated filings recorded by the Immigration Court have been designated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as ‘family unit’ cases.” That is just 41,488 out of 174,628 cases. And that number is really inflated because, as noted by TRAC, “each parent and each child are separately counted as “court cases” even though many are likely to be heard together and resolved as one family unit.” They conclude that “recent family arrivals” comprise “just 4 percent of the current court’s 855,807 case backlog” as of February 28.

Even the liberal Syracuse University, which is clearly upset that the administration is not doing enough to grant bogus asylum claims, articulates the case I’ve made all along – that nothing in our laws compels this outcome.

Families arriving at the border do not automatically have the right to file for asylum in Immigration Court. Under existing laws, such families must pass a number of hurdles. First, those simply coming for better economic opportunity are subject to expedited removal by DHS – a purely administrative process that doesn’t require a decision by any judge. Simply expressing a “credible fear” of returning to their home county is also not sufficient. Each family must pass a credible fear or reasonable fear review. Those that do not pass this review do not have an opportunity to proceed and present their asylum claims. Again, such individuals are subject to expedited removal from the country.

So why is this administration not placing every single person who comes to the border into expedited removal? Even if they begin asserting the credible fear claims thereafter, those claims can be denied by Trump through his administrative officials without any review from the courts, and then they are placed back in expedited removal.

The only excuse the government has left is that it doesn’t have enough suitable facilities to hold the family units in order to comport with the Flores settlement. But the administration has had months to muster all of its logistical assets and diplomatic prowess with Guatemala and Honduras to begin an airlift to Central America for expedited removal.

Let’s put aside those already released as water under the bridge for the time being. Declaring expedited removal for the next wave of illegal immigrants will send an immediate message to those farther down the pipeline that catch-and-release is over. It would be worth clearing out all the facilities (which they are doing anyway) in order to hold just the next group for the week or so needed for removal. There is no reason why this should take more than 20 days.

Moreover, the president can nullify the Flores settlement, which in itself is a violation of law requiring us to detain these people (8 U.S. Code § 1225(B)(iii)(IV)) and write a new procedure for detaining family units together. The DHS published such a proposal on September 7, 2018, but for whatever reason has never promulgated it.

The laws aren’t the problem. They are, in fact, the solution. This is not about asylum, because most aren’t currently asserting it. Nor is this about asylum law, which was written to prevent this very outcome. This is about the abolishing of our laws and borders. (For more from the author of “Bombshell From a Top Border Agent Reveals Huge Asylum Issue” please click HERE)

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Americans Debbie Burgess and Mark O’Gara were killed this month due to our lack of resolve to secure the border and expeditiously deport other countries’ criminals. In addition, there are many criminal aliens, being allowed to remain in the country way too long, committing rape and child molestation. Sadly, most of these cases will remain unknown to the public.

Father of 10 killed in St. Paul by drunk-driving Central American teen

Mark J. O’Gara, a 52-year-old father of 10 children, was killed on April 3 in St. Paul when he was pulling out of a driveway and was hit by a speeding drunk driver. That driver was Jose O. Vasquez-Guillen, a 19-year-old illegal alien who came here in 2016 from Honduras. No, not all those innocent faces the media shows at the border will be harmless upstanding citizens once they are resettled in this country. Vasquez-Guillen was ordered deported in 2016 by an immigration judge — in absentia, because he failed to show up to his immigration hearing. He was a fugitive until he was arrested by ICE this month.

Once again, this is another case where our broken policies are allowing these individuals to obtain catch-and-release with the hope that they show up for a hearing in front of an immigration judge. Sadly, they often commit deadly crimes after it’s already too late to apprehend them. There are over one million illegal aliens with final deportation orders who remain in the country, including 644,000 from Mexico and Central America. Last month, a Guatemalan teen who was the recipient of catch-and-release killed a beloved mother and schoolteacher in a driving wreck in Mobile, Alabama.

Debbie Burgess killed by illegal immigrant deported nine times

Police in Knoxville, Tennessee, suspect Juan Francisco, an illegal alien with a prior DUI conviction, as the driver behind a hit-and-run that killed Debbie Burgess on April 8. Francisco is still at large. His history goes back as far as 2002, when he was charged with theft, and 2004, when he was charged with reckless driving. According to an ICE official I spoke to, the Juan Francisco they have on record was actually deported nine times, but they will not publicly confirm it until they actually apprehend him and verify his identity.

Just last December, the Knoxville fire chief’s son, Pierce Corcoran, was killed in a hit-and-run by an illegal alien who crossed over the middle of a highway, striking the victim’s vehicle in a head-on collision. The grieving parents have not gotten justice yet from Francisco Franco-Cambrany, a Mexican national, because the perpetrator was deported after it was too late and after he was released on bond. It appears that ICE feared he’d evade justice altogether and remain in our country, so it quickly deported him to Mexico.

CASA “election canvasser” arrested for murder

Not all the illegal aliens working for CASA de Maryland are merely working on civil rights for peaceful “immigrants.” Darwin Reynadi-Rosa was arrested by police in Montgomery County, Maryland, for serving as the driver and lookout for an assassination-style shooting that left one man seriously wounded. According to WJLA, CASA confirmed that Reynadi-Rosa was indeed employed as “an election canvasser,” but was terminated in 2018 for “poor performance.” According to an ICE spokesman, “On April 16, ICE lodged a detainer on unlawfully present El Salvadoran national Darwin Reynadi-Rosa following his recent arrest for assault and attempted murder.” ICE confirmed to me that “an immigration judge previously granted Reynadi-Rosa voluntary departure on Aug. 26, 2008, however Reynadi-Rosa failed to comply with the judge’s order and depart the United States.”

Again, we see that because our government fails to follow expedited removal laws, these criminals get placed in the black hole of immigration courts and can remain in the country. In this case, we had the worst of gang-bangers being allowed to remain and engage in “election canvassing.”

An illegal alien recipient of catch-and-release charged with raping a 7-year-old girl

Even rural Culpeper County, Virginia, is not immune to the criminal alien activity that plagues northern Virginia. Last Thursday, Oscar Ramirez, a 33-year-old illegal alien from El Salvador, was charged with raping a seven-year-old girl between April 6 and 7. According to an ICE official, Ramirez was picked up in Roma, Texas, in 2005 but was released on his own recognizance pending an immigration hearing. Ramirez absconded and was order deported in absentia in August 2006 and has been a fugitive until he was arrested on April 11.

All of these individuals who are not placed into expedited removal, as required by the laws passed by Congress in 1996, are very unlikely to show up to their hearings. All the crimes committed after aliens are either released by the feds or sanctuary cities are, by definition, completely avoidable.

Catching sex slavers: Just another day on the highway

Last week, an astute Ohio state trooper pulled over Juan Carlos Morales-Pedraza, an illegal alien from Mexico, and discovered that he was transporting his 15-year-old sex slave from New Jersey to Chicago. Human and sex trafficking were terms that were rarely used in this country until this decade, yet now they are commonplace, thanks to the criminal aliens that have been brought in and allowed to reside with impunity, against the laws on the books. Morales-Pedraza was previously deported but was able to come back in.

Also in Ohio, Clementino Co-Juc, an 18-year-old illegal alien from Guatemala, was charged last week in Defiance County, Ohio, with the rape of a minor.

The rash of criminal alien murders, drunk driving, drug trafficking, and sex offenses in this country demonstrates the need for more ICE agents. At the border, we need a change in policies to follow the actual laws on the books so that these people are immediately deported without access to the courts. But for the estimated two million criminal aliens already in this country, we need more manpower to apprehend them before more Americans are harmed.

By ramping up deportations and then putting together a comprehensive plan to stop illegal immigration and counter the cartels at the border, we will stop needlessly importing other countries’ criminals and prevent avoidable crimes from taking place. As it stands now, there are nearly 60,000 foreign nationals in the federal prison system in the custody of Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Marshals. It costs $1.42 billion a year. In addition, our government has continued the suicidal policy of counting these people in the Census! Thus, we pay for the rope that hangs our own people in more ways than one. (For more from the author of “Criminal Alien Rampage: Homicide, Molestation, Drunk Driving” please click HERE)

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