In France last June, an unnamed Syrian “refugee” stabbed six people on a playground. He had applied for asylum in France but was rejected—because he had already received asylum in Sweden a few years earlier.
In Switzerland last week, a man with an ax took passengers hostage on a train until police shot him. Thought to be Iranian, he had been “assigned to an asylum-seeker center,” according to reports.
In London this month, an Afghan named Abdul Ezedi threw acid on a woman and her daughters. Ezedi sneaked into Britain in 2016 and was twice rejected for asylum. He was charged with sex offenses in 2017 and 2018 but didn’t go to prison. On his third asylum application, he claimed a conversion to Christianity and got asylum on the basis that he’d be persecuted if sent home.
Here in the U.S., Ethiopian Bazen Berhe was just sentenced to 100 years for stabbing a co-worker to death in a Target parking lot in Virginia back in April 2021. According to the Washington Post, Berhe’s motive was apparently “absolute anger” at having his asylum application refused. Berhe said he “would have stabbed anyone … even a 4-year-old kid” in his rage.
Then, there was Ahmed Shihab, an Iraqi who came to the U.S. on a tourist visa and claimed asylum in 2020, after which he began to plot to bring ISIS terrorists into the U.S. to assassinate former President George W. Bush.
Recently, we had young gang members who entered the U.S. illegally—ostensibly to claim asylum—but who are actually robbing people’s phones and bank accounts. The ringleader and suspects arrested so far are all Venezuelans who operated from the comfort of taxpayer-provided migrant shelters in New York City.
What do all these stories have in common? They all involve foreign nationals during or after completing their asylum process. Due to an ongoing flood of economic migrants cloaked in bogus asylum claims (economic reasons are not sufficient for claiming asylum), desirable countries like the U.S. have a massive population of aliens living here indefinitely as they wait years for their asylum hearings. And even when they are refused asylum and ordered deported, many remain as “asylum zombies,” with their legal options to stay stone dead but still physically here.
For the most part, we have no idea of their criminal or mental health histories. Governments that fail to deport bogus asylum-seekers, or at least those who are known dangers, force their unwitting citizens to bear the serious risks of assaults like those above.
Like ours, Europe’s asylum system not only fails to distinguish between people fleeing for their lives and migrants looking for jobs, it fails to deport most of those who don’t qualify for asylum. Around a million people claimed asylum last year in the EU, and just over 40% received it. Yet last year, only 65,000 out of 400,000 deportation orders in the European Union were carried out. That means most refused asylum applicants, including some obvious threats to law and order, simply stick around.
The Venezuelan gangs that are robbing New Yorkers are theoretically in the asylum process. That means they will claim that they can’t go home because they’d be persecuted for political, religious, or other protected grounds. Their cases could take many years to resolve. Meanwhile, New York City police said they are “essentially ghost criminals. No criminal history. No photos. No cellphone. No social media. Sometimes we’re even unclear on name or a date of birth.”
This utterly contradicts Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas’ claim that illegal immigrants are “vetted” before being released into our communities much less his statements that the Department of Homeland Security is applying “tougher consequences for unlawful entry.”
A majority of the millions now pouring over the open U.S. border are unlikely to qualify for asylum. Yet some of them are getting their first court date—just to schedule future court dates—years into the future. If they want to go to San Antonio, Los Angeles, Jacksonville, Milwaukee, Chicago, Washington, or Denver, they don’t have to show up until March 2027. If they choose New York City, they can delay their first hearing until 2033.
Once they finally start the court process that will end with them either getting asylum or being ordered deported, the proceedings will take at least four years—and, given the numbers entering the clogged system, likely much longer.
In the U.S., there are already over 1.2 million foreigners with final orders of removal from an immigration judge. Of these, over 400,000 have been convicted of crimes in the U.S. Yet, under Mayorkas, the Department of Homeland Security has been instructed to not enforce most immigration laws. Now, the Biden administration has threatened that unless the White House gets the supplemental budget money it wants from Congress, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s resources, particularly those used for detention, will be slashed.
President Joe Biden tried to force Congress to approve $60 billion for Ukraine aid by jamming it into a giant supplemental budget package along with aid for Israel as well as border security. (The “border security” in the package mostly meant spending another $20 billion to mass release and then grant benefits to more illegal aliens).
That overstuffed spending package failed to pass at first run last week, but the Senate stripped the border and immigration policy changes and passed funding for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and “refugees and entrants” to the U.S. on the second try.
Now, the president’s message to the House of Representatives is “Nice country you have here—would be a pity if anything should happen to it.” Not only does he already refuse to use his existing, fully sufficient executive powers to quickly slow the rush of illegal entry at the border, but Biden threatens to further slow-walk detaining, arresting, and removing illegal aliens already here.
Exposing American citizens to the risks of violence from those with no legal right to remain here is bad enough. To do so for political reasons smells a lot like extortion. Biden should use the ample powers and funds he has to secure the border. And he should tell Mayorkas to rescind his (non)enforcement memo and let ICE do its job: Arrest, detain, and deport illegal aliens, prioritizing the most dangerous, but sparing none for purely political considerations.
The BorderLine is a weekly Daily Signal feature examining everything from the unprecedented illegal immigration crisis at the border to immigration’s impact on cities and states throughout the land. We will also shed light on other critical border-related issues like human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism, and more.
Read Other BorderLine Columns:
The Gang’s All Here—Thanks to Biden’s Open Border
What I Saw at America’s Wide-Open Northern Border
No Such Thing as a Free Lunch: The Cost of Unchecked Illegal Immigration on Americans
Concerns About Proposed Senate Border Security Compromise
Biden’s Border Madness Has Cheapened What It Means to Be an American
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