A number of migrants, traveling to the United States-Mexico border in the hopes of being released into the nation’s interior, profiled by CNN said they are fleeing crime and looking to secure U.S. jobs. Neither is a valid claim for asylum.
As President Joe Biden’s administration ends Title 42, the public health authority that has been used as a border control to remove close to three million illegal aliens from the border since mid-2020, hundreds of thousands of migrants are waiting in Mexico to rush the border.
Their goal is ultimately to claim asylum and be subsequently released into the U.S. interior, through Biden’s expansive Catch and Release network, while awaiting their immigration hearings in the future.
This week, CNN profiled a number of migrants traveling through Mexico to get to the border in hopes of being released into the U.S. interior. Nearly all said they were fleeing crime and looking for jobs.
One migrant family, a 23-year-old Honduran man named Roberto, as well as his teenage sister and father, told CNN they are fleeing crime in their native country and want to find work in the U.S.
Another migrant from Venezuela told CNN he is fleeing violence as well as the country’s poor economic conditions, saying residents do not make enough money to afford full meals.
Crime and an inability to find a job are not valid claims for asylum, as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has made clear. Asylum is reserved for those who can prove they are being persecuted on the basis of race, religion, nationality, or political opinion. Those persecuted because of their ties to a particular social group can also qualify for asylum.
One such migrant couple from Colombia told CNN they left their five children behind and gave no reason as to how they qualify for asylum in the U.S.
Likewise, the Los Angeles Times interviewed a dozen migrants making their way to the border. Most said they want to enter the U.S. to get a job, flee crime in their native country, and, in one case, care for elderly relatives already living in the U.S.
As Breitbart News has chronicled for years, few migrants end up securing asylum.
Thanks to immense backlogs in the federal immigration court system, many migrants will be released into the U.S. interior and likely remain, regardless of whether they have valid asylum claims. In New York City, for example, some migrants with dubious asylum claims will not have to go before an immigration judge until the year 2033 because of how backed up the system is.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.