Floodgates closed: Eight of 10 asylum seekers now booted by judges as Trump restores borders

Nearly 80 percent of migrants seeking asylum in the US were sent packing in the last quarter, as immigration judges take a tougher line under the Trump administration, which has made it a priority to restore the border.In that same span there’s been an accompanying spike in deportations.In December, there were 38,215 illegal migrants given the boot, 50% above the 19,265 in December 2023 under President Joe Biden and 35% more than the 24,979 in December 2024, according to data compiled by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.And the enforcement has been sustained, with more than 30,000 deportations every month since Trump took office.“It’s having a real impact.

The Trump Administration is doing all kinds of things to drive down the asylum grant rate,” said Andrew Arthur, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Policy and a former immigration judge.Michael Cutler, who spent 30 years as an agent at the former Immigration and Naturalization Services, cheered the return of common-sense border policy.“If you look at what asylum is supposed to be, it’s a very narrow definition .

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You have to be able to demonstrate a credible fear and be able to articulate that credible fear of persecution,” he told The Post.“It’s not because there’s a gang that’s doing business down the block or you can’t stand your mother in law or you can’t find a job,” he added.The hard line is a far cry from the open-door border policy of the Biden years, which saw judges granting a staggering 50% of asylum claims in May 2022, during a year when Customs and Border Protection reported a record-breaking total of 2.76 million people crossed the southern border.“We could afford to take in a heartbeat, another 4 million people,” Biden said at an Iowa campaign event in 2019.“The idea that a country of 330 million people cannot absorb people who are in desperate need and who are justifiably fleeing oppression is absolutely bizarre.”Trump ...