Dems learned nothing from the Harry Reid mistake about setting precedents. They broke the glass and now they’ve got to face the consequences.
Part of the left’s broader strategy about creating permanent one-party rule was flooding the country with illegal aliens passing themselves as ‘refugees’ (so they could stay) rather than economic opportunists (who, by law, are NOT permitted to stay). In order to claim ‘asylum’ you have to want something more than an economic upgrade, you have to be in some sort of danger.
There was a concerted effort by Cartels, NGOs, the activist left and God alone knows how many other parties in greasing the skids for caravans of people from parts unknown to come to America with all the right answers to the questions that would fast-track someone to the asylum process, with zero regard for who actually was running from actual danger.
As you might imagine, iterating that process over millions of cases of bogus asylum seekers flooding in during the Biden years generates a metric carton of legal filings that will need to be filled and filed in their proper contexts. That creates an immediate cash cow for the armies of lawyers translating these opportunities into billable hours. (Presumably funded by some combination of taxpayers and NGOs, if you’ll pardon the redundancy).
But that creates both a paper trail and a potential problem for the lawyer.
Remember how lawyers who jumped in to give legal defense to the various spurious cases ginned up against defendants of either Trumpworld or J6? Or how about those who gave legal counsel in the various legal challenges brought up against the 2020 results, using due process? Some were charged, others faced disbarment, others still were ‘merely’ blacklisted for DARING to attend to the RIGHT to an attorney.
If they were harassed and charged with NO legal predicate, do you suppose we should be expected to look the other way in examples where lawyers are openly profiteering from bogus asylum claims designed to subvert national sovereignty?
The Department of Homeland Security’s top lawyer on Tuesday directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys to aggressively pursue administrative fraud cases against immigration lawyers accused of filing false asylum claims, the latest step in the administration’s push to speed up removals, expand enforcement and challenge the legal infrastructure around immigration.
In a memo dated May 26 and obtained by CBS News, DHS General Counsel James Percival instructed ICE attorneys within the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor to develop “anti-fraud policies” designed for “robust enforcement” of existing federal anti-fraud law. The memo said that any effort “should include enforcement against immigration attorneys filing false asylum claims in immigration court.”
While the directive does not create new penalties, it signals that ICE lawyers will begin to use existing administrative enforcement tools more frequently to crack down not only against migrants accused of submitting fraudulent applications, but also against the lawyers who represent them.
“For many years, millions of illegal aliens have committed fraud on our immigration system,” Percival wrote, without citing specifics. “In no place is this more rampant than in immigration court.” — CBS [emphasis added]
This pivot accomplishes a couple of things.
First, it flips the incentive structure. Where immigration clients were once a cash cow of billable hours and easy money, the cost/benefit analysis changes drastically once you factor in penalties and legal jeopardy.
Second, it would not take very many arrests and convictions for others doing the same thing to think twice about taking that risk
Third, when the supply of lawyers willing to put their letterhead behind bogus claims dries up… there will be fewer resources for bogus applicants to lean on, limiting how many others can continue to game the system.
And that’s before you widen the aperture and look at potential culpability of organizations using their charitable status to perpetuate dubious asylum claims at scale.
