Rep. Peter King claims that the asylum process is broken, and that Trump’s fixing it.

Support reasonable measures by AG Barr to get control of asylum abuses at border. Must be done. @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/KNuAcJPZAm

— Rep. Pete King (@RepPeteKing) April 17, 2019

He’s fixing it in the way that a crook hires a fixer to eliminate the problem.

The reality is that the asylum process is broken, but for an entirely different reason.

It’s broken because of a lack of judges available to process the claims in a timely manner. It’s the same problem with immigration generally. Visa overstays are the main reason people are here illegally - not because they crossed the border illegally. Failing to deal with all the paperwork and failing to timely process the claims is why there’s a mess.

The number of people seeking asylum has climbed because of various crises across Latin America, but the US continues to throttle the number of people coming in and denying more asylum claims than they have in the past few years (although the number of those claims adjudicated is under 45,000 a year for the past decade). The percentage of those who have asylum relief granted remains 30% and below (and actually ticked up in 2018). This isn’t a crisis.

We’re talking about 45,000 people being processed for asylum claims. We have a nation of over 324 million. Those seeking asylum is .000138 of the US population.

That’s the threat here. That is what Trump and the GOP are so fearful of.

UPDATE:
Source of asylum stats.