A top official at President Joe Biden’s State Department admitted to Congress that requiring border crossers to first seek asylum in Mexico rather than the United States would drastically cut illegal immigration.
During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on October 25, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) questioned various officials of Biden’s agencies about the administration’s refusal to impose a “Safe Third Country Agreement” similar to the deal the U.S. has with Canada.
“Why don’t you implement a Safe Third Country policy? It says, under asylum … you have to seek asylum in the first safe country,” Kennedy said:
So if you come from Venezuela or Nicaragua or another Central American country, you have to seek asylum in the first safe country? Why don’t you do that? And then that would eliminate 70 percent of the 8 million [illegal aliens], that’s 5.6 million. [Emphasis added]
At the northern border, for example, the Safe Third Country policy ensures that border crossers arriving in the United States from Canada must first seek asylum in Canada before doing so in the United States. A nearly identical policy at the southern border would provide that non-Mexican border crossers first seek asylum in Mexico before attempting to do so in the U.S.
Joseph Salazar, director for Central American Affairs for the State Department, told Kennedy that a Safe Third Country Agreement would in fact dramatically cut illegal immigration by more than half.
The exchange went as follows:
“[A] Safe Third Country policy … would eliminate 5.6 million people, boom, done, coming into our country illegally. Wouldn’t it?” Kennedy asked, to which Salazar responded, “It would, sir,” before suggesting that the State Department is carrying out policies to help the border issue.
The admission comes as an estimated nine million border crossers and illegal aliens have arrived at the nation’s southern border since Biden took office — an unprecedented level of illegal immigration never before seen in American history.
Through Biden’s Catch and Release network and lax immigration enforcement, the administration has welcomed at least four million border crossers and illegal aliens into American communities.
Every month, the Biden administration is releasing more than 60,000 border crossers and illegal aliens into the United States interior.
In March, when Kennedy questioned Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on a Safe Third Country Agreement, the top official responded that such a plan is not “sound policy.”
“I also do not think that is sound policy that we should shut down our entire asylum system,” Mayorkas said at the time.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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