Border Official Demands Congress ‘Close These Loopholes’

Efforts to respond to a well-publicized caravan of mostly Honduran migrants trying to enter the United States can only do so much without help from Congress, a top official said Thursday.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions earlier this week announced some of those efforts, including pledges to prosecute lawbreakers and to send more prosecutors and immigration judges to the border to hear asylum claims.

But Ronald Vitiello, acting deputy commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, said on “The Laura Ingraham Show” that the problem is that foreigners and smugglers have figured out that the U.S. asylum system offers an easy way into the United States.

“These individuals and even cartels and criminal organizations — human traffickers — have found the weakness and loopholes in the way that immigration law is enforced at the border, both at the ports and between the ports,” he said.

Vitiello (pictured above) said President Donald Trump has changed the “enthusiasm” for border enforcement. He said the administration has tried to increase resources and build a wall.

But those measures cannot stop foreigners who claim to have a “credible fear” of persecution in their home countries.

Under current U.S. law, immigration authorities must admit anyone who meets that initial test. That person then receives a date to appear in immigration court to make the claim, but the date often is many months or years into the future because of a backlogged and overburdened immigration court system.

Eventually, judges reject most asylum claims. But by then, a large number of asylum seekers have disappeared into the fabric of American life and ignore deportation orders.

“Until these loopholes are shored up, we’re gonna be vulnerable to this kind of population, people coming to the border, entering illegally, and then claiming a ‘credible fear,’ eventually to be released in the United States,” Vitiello said.

He added: “The law still leaves us vulnerable, so Congress needs to act here and give us a way to shore up some of these loopholes.”

When U.S. Border Patrol officers are overwhelmed by illegal immigration, Vitiello said, it distracts from the important mission of combating drug cartels and violence.

If Congress closes the loopholes and adds more resources, Americans will see the impact at the border, Vitiello said.

Related: A Huge Court Backlog Is the Kink in U.S. Immigration System

“What we recognize is that if you give, if you provide a consequence for somebody that’s coming to the border illegally, then you get a lot less of that illegal activity … Every time we’ve increased resources, every time we’ve done better at the border, we get less traffic,” he said.

Vitiello said he began his career the year before then-President Ronald Reagan signed an amnesty covering about 3 million illegal immigrants.

For a time, he added, the federal government aggressively targeted businesses that hired illegal immigrants and took other enforcement steps.

“Unfortunately, that wasn’t really sustained,” he said. “And back in those days, I’ll tell you that in the ’80s, you know, despite having a president who believed in sovereign borders, nobody really cared about how well the Border Patrol did.”

PoliZette senior writer Brendan Kirby can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.