Asylum Claims
U.S. Congressman Dan Goldman (D–NY) claims that “immigrants” with “ongoing asylum applications are legally in this country,” so DHS can’t legally detain or deport them.
IN FACT, asylum applicants aren’t legally in the country, and federal law explicitly requires DHS to detain or expel them while their applications are pending. The only exception to this is a temporary grant of parole, which doesn’t confer legal status and can be revoked by DHS. Here are the specifics:
Federal law gives DHS three options for processing asylum applicants:
- Expel them: The law states that “if” an “asylum officer” finds “that an alien does not have a credible fear of persecution, the officer shall order the alien removed from the United States without further hearing or review.” It also states that if an alien arrives by land “from a foreign territory contiguous to the United States,” DHS “may return the alien to that territory pending a proceeding” for removal or asylum.
- Detain them: The law states that “if” an “asylum officer” finds “that an alien has a credible fear of persecution,” the “alien shall be detained for further consideration of the application for asylum.”
- Parole them: The law states that DHS may “temporarily” “parole” applicants for asylum into the country, but this “shall not be regarded as an admission of the alien,” and the alien must be taken into “custody” when DHS decides the “purposes” of the parole have ended.
As such, a federal appeals court explained in 2022 that grants of “parole” don’t confer “legal status” and create a “legal fiction” in which the “paroled alien is physically allowed to enter the country,” but the “legal status of the alien is the same as if he or she were still being held at the border waiting for his or her application for admission to be granted or denied.”
Despite the fact that the law allows for parole “only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,” President Biden paroled millions of legally inadmissible aliens into the country.
By twisting that provision of the law, Biden welcomed hordes of illegal immigrants with meritless claims of asylum and gave them court dates up to 12 years into the future. This would allow them to settle in the U.S. and:
- receive free medical care in emergency rooms and for childbirths.
- have children who receive birthright citizenship and all of the welfare that comes along with that.
- be effectively immune from deportation under the policies of future Democrat presidents, as they were under Obama and Biden.
- become eligible for amnesty and full citizenship if the Democratic Party Platform is enacted.
The polar opposite of what Goldman alleges, Trump is actually enforcing the law instead of skirting it like his predecessors.
