A Democratic congresswoman Tuesday acknowledged that the U.S. immigration system is being overwhelmed with asylum seekers who do not actually qualify for asylum.
California Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren, while speaking during a House Judiciary Committee hearing, publicly acknowledged that most migrants who seek asylum lose their cases in immigration court and argued that detention centers are too underfunded to handle the sheer volume of migrants entering the country. Her statements come as President Donald Trump is moving forward with a hardline border agenda that seeks to limit illegal immigration into the country.
“The system was overwhelmed, and I think it’s worth noting that a majority of those who sought asylum in immigration court lost their asylum case, so clearly, people who are not eligible for asylum were admitted to the United States,” Lofgren said during the committee hearing.
The California lawmaker then noted that any foreign national on American soil, irrespective of their immigration status, is entitled to make an asylum claim under U.S. law — and added that migrants have responded to the law in such an enormous wave that it’s broken down the immigration system.
“We have never provided enough money to detain everybody who’s seeking asylum, not during the first Trump administration, not during [the Biden administration] and not now,” Lofgren explained. “And so I think we need to address this issue in addition to other elements of immigration law that are not functioning properly.”
The unprecedented border crisis that was sparked under the Biden-Harris administration — when millions of illegal migrants entered the U.S. at record levels — led to a historic wave of asylum applications. A record-setting total of 945,370 asylum applications were filed in fiscal year 2023, according to a report from the Department of Homeland Security released in October.
The huge wave of applications has piled onto an ever-growing backlog of cases. The number of pending immigration cases ballooned to a new high of 3.6 million by the end of fiscal year 2024, according to a congressional report.
Record illegal immigration has also resulted in many asylum seekers being released into the interior of the U.S. due to the sheer volume of migrants being too much for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers to hold. A current critique of legislation like the Laken Riley Act — which requires the detention of migrants involved in theft-related crimes — is that detention centers do not have the space or funding to hold higher numbers of illegal migrants.
“After all these years, it was fantastic to hear Rep. Lofgren announce that she supports the detention of all asylum seekers and agrees that most of them are coming for economic opportunity, not because of persecution,” Rosemary Jenks, policy director at Immigration Accountability Project, said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“It is so encouraging to see Rep. Lofgren recognize that our asylum system was abused the last four years and how more enforcement resources are desperately needed,” RJ Hauman, president of the National Immigration Center for Enforcement, stated to the DCNF. “Democrats must put their money where their mouth is and join Republicans to change current law and provide more detention beds.”
“The immeasurable harm placed on the American people, our communities, and the very fabric of our nation must end,” Hauman said.
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