An immigration reform activist on Tuesday praised efforts by President Donald Trump to close loopholes that have led to an abuse of asylum rules, but he warned that the administration needs help from Congress.

Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), said on “The Laura Ingraham Show” that two main factors are driving a massive increase in people seeking asylum.

The first is the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, intended to prevent exploitation of children. And the second is a consent decree signed by President Bill Clinton in 1997 and strengthened in 2006. Both have resulted in the requirement that all illegal immigrant children apprehended at the border be released.

To advocates of more immigration, Stein said, those loopholes are a feature — not a bug — of the immigration system.

“They know darn well that when they create these loopholes, there’s gonna be exploitation, and more and more people are gonna try to take advantage of them,” he said. “Yet they seem utterly unconcerned when they see rampant fraud. And they seem to have the view that everybody who wants to come in should be able to come in just because they may be living in a poor country.”

Stein noted that the current asylum process actually grew out of a desire to tighten the system following the first attempt to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993. Congress responded by passing a law requiring migrants to demonstrate a “credible fear” before they could enter the United States and pursue asylum.

“Unfortunately, over successive administrations, the threshold standard for credible fear has been weakened,” he said.

Not only do phony asylum claims make a mockery of U.S. law, Stein said, but they also unfairly disadvantage people who are trying to immigrate legally.

“If you give somebody political asylum, Laura, you’re letting them jump the line in front of tens of millions of people, hundreds of millions of people, around the world who would like to come here,” he said.

The system has become such a farce, Stein said, that hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied teenagers have arrived at the U.S. border. Under policies put in place by Barack Obama, those youths have been taken at U.S. taxpayer expense to the homes of their parents, who themselves are in the country illegally.

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“In fact, all we were doing under Obama — and it’s been continuing because of the fact that the administration’s hands are tied — is essentially reuniting families that have been using traffickers … The whole thing has become so totally ridiculous that you have to give the Trump administration tremendous credit.”

“It’s hard to explain how Republicans can stand there and see something so universally supported and not get their weight behind it.”

The administration needs Congress to close legal loopholes, Stein said. He pointed to a bill offered by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) that has languished, with little hope of passing. That bill would vastly improve the immigration system, Stein said.

But many congressional Republicans are running from Trump’s immigration agenda, Stein added.

“It’s hard to explain how Republicans can stand there and see something so universally supported and not get their weight behind it,” he said. “This is a great opportunity for the public to put pressure on Congress.”

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