The number of illegal immigrant unaccompanied minors granted asylum by the Obama administration has increased by more than 4,100 percent since Fiscal Year 2013, Breitbart News has learned.
According to written responses from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services provided this week to the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and The National Interest, the number of unaccompanied minors granted asylum has skyrocketed.
In FY 2013, USCIS granted approval for 58 unaccompanied minors’ applications for asylum. By FY 2015 up to May 5, USCIS had granted asylum for 2,458 of applications, an increase of more than 4100 percent. FY 2014 saw 271 unaccompanied minors granted asylum.
To be sure, the number of applications for asylum has also increased, due to the recent and ongoing influx of illegal immigration by unaccompanied minors — largely from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — at the southern border.
In FY 2013 USCIS received 718 applications for asylum. In FY 2013 that number increased to 2,797, and by FY 2015 (through May 5) there were 7,712 applications.
A Senate aide noted that the increases in asylum approvals are due not just to the border surge, but also a more lenient administration. The aide wrote in an email to Breibart News:
As USCIS indicates, the [Unaccompanied Alien Children] ‘who apply for asylum do so approximately one year or more after arrival in the U.S.’ Given the significant increase in the number of UACs who crossed the border beginning last summer, we can expect a substantial increase in the number of cases where USCIS grants asylum to UACs – especially when combined with the clear liberalization of our asylum laws.
While many have not received asylum, as Breitbart News has reported, the likelihood that the Obama administration will deport those Central American minors not granted asylum is very low. For example, last fiscal year Immigration and Customs Enforcement CE removed just 1,379 unaccompanied illegal immigrant minors from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
This fiscal year through May 9, ICE has removed 624 unaccompanied minors from those three Central American countries. Further, these removals were not necessarily unaccompanied minors apprehended in FY 2014. Instead the totals include those who were 18 at the time of their initial book-in and go as far back as FY 2009 through FY 2014/2015.
The numbers of Central American unaccompanied minors that have entered the U.S. illegally in recent months and years are much greater.
Last fiscal year, 51,705 unaccompanied minors from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The vast majority were released into the interior of the U.S., placed with relatives or sponsors across the country. This fiscal year through June, CBP has apprehended 17,974 unaccompanieasylumd minors from those three countries.
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