The Government Accountability Office released a new report that shows DHS officials have “limited capabilities” when it comes to detecting fraudulent asylum applications.
Officers are under pressure to make fast decisions without getting the information they need often only using the alien’s testimony. Even if they do follow-up on an application the foreign information requests needed to verify the immigrant’s story are often delayed or ignored.
Both DHS and DOJ “have limited capability to detect and prevent asylum fraud and both agencies’ efforts to date have focused on case-by-case fraud detection rather than more strategic, risk-based approaches,” the GAO wrote in their report.
According the report asylum claims have increased 130 percent from about 47,118 in 2010 to 108,152 in 2014 as more illegal aliens have discovered the asylum process. Once a person is granted asylum they are immediately allowed to live and work in the U.S. and are eligible to receive welfare benefits.
The GAO found that immigration judges granted asylum to 3,709 aliens who were connected to attorneys already convicted of submitting fraudulent asylum claims and that the DHS or the DOJ rarely prosecuted the attorneys or illegal aliens for filing fraudulent claims.
The report noted that the USCIS and other government departments did not see the security risks that processing fraudulent asylum could create.
“The effective rubberstamping of asylum applications is one of the root causes of the ongoing border surge and it also carries with it serious national security concerns. Terrorism experts agree that the asylum process is a vulnerability that terrorists have and will continue to exploit to gain entry into the United States,” wrote House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) in a press release.
Read more at The Washington Times.
