WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Steve Daines today delivered remarks at the weekly Republican Senate Leadership press conference calling attention to the severe backlog in the immigration court system that has been caused by President Biden and Senate Democrats’ open border policies.
Click HERE to watch the video.
“Anyway, many of us have been involved in interviews before. Sometimes the question is ‘Where are you going to be in 10 years?’ That’s a question, you usually or sometimes hear in an interview, but now it’s the question being asked of illegal immigrants who’ve come into this country at the southern border. Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants are receiving a ‘notice to appear’ in immigration court as they’re being released into our country. As of last year, there were some notices that started to be dated for as far out as 2033. The AP had a story, ‘Immigrants waiting 10 years in U.S. just to get a court date.’
“Now, if you think they’re going to be showing up for that court date at 2 p.m. on such-and-such date in 2033, you might have to think twice about where reality is. And, by the way, that’s just for the initial hearing, it’s estimated to take about four years to move their case through the system before there’s a final adjudication. So, that means there’s some migrants who are going to be here 14 years before it’s even determined whether their asylum claim is legitimate or not. Aside from the obvious insanity of counting on illegal immigrants to actually show up to court case that’s scheduled a decade in the future, this massive flow is hurting legitimate asylum seekers.
“This is an unprecedented border crisis, it’s overwhelmed border patrol agents, it’s broken the immigration system, and this backlog is the symptom. It’s not the actual problem we need to solve. So, Joe Biden and Senate Democrats’ open border policies have created this unprecedented flow of illegal immigrants who are rushing to our border from around the world. As I talked about last week, there’s a daily flight from Istanbul to Bogotá and we’re picking up individuals who are on the terror watch list who are headed to the United States of America. We must secure the southern border immediately, stem the flow of migrants and reform the asylum standards.”