Jun 2, 2024
Biden admin offers ‘mass amnesty’ to illegal immigrants, terminates 350,000 asylum cases: report
Since President Biden took office, 77% of asylum seekers have been permitted to stay in the country.
Since 2022, the federal government has closed over 350,000 asylum cases for migrants without criminal records or for those not deemed threats to national security. This closure of cases means these migrants' asylum claims are "terminated without a decision on the merits." Doing so effectively removes them from the legal system by neither granting nor denying their claims.
As a result, these migrants are not required to meet with authorities and can remain in the US without fear of deportation.
Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge now with the Center for Immigration Studies, criticized the program, explaining to the New York Post, “This is just a massive amnesty under the guise of prosecutorial discretion.”
“You’re basically allowing people who don’t have a right to be in the United States to be here indefinitely,” he added.
The report also highlighted claims from ICE officers who have observed an increase in criminal activity among these migrants after their asylum cases were dismissed.
“If the migrants, who ICE no longer controls or monitors, commit crimes after the dismissal, ICE will have to start all over and issue a new Notice to Appear in court and start the clock all over again,” one ICE official explained.
A memo issued by ICE principal legal adviser Kerry Doyle in 2022 directed prosecutors to dismiss cases for migrants not deemed national security threats. That year, "36,000 were ordered removed, 32,000 were awarded asylum, and 102,550 had their cases dismissed or otherwise taken off the books – 10 times the number in 2014," according to the Post.
Since President Biden took office, 77% of asylum seekers have been permitted to stay in the US. The current number of pending asylum cases stands at 3.5 million.
