Thousands of men, women, and children have journeyed thousands of miles to escape the highest homicide rate in the world and extreme poverty, simply for the chance to make their case for asylum. A chance to live somewhere, anywhere where they can be safe and make a living.

Seeking asylum at a port of entry is not a crime, and in fact is protected by both US and International law. However, authorities at legal border crossings have been limiting the number of people who can request asylum. Only 40 to 100 people are allowed each day. And there is currently a backlog of over 750,000 pending cases in US courts. And this backlog when the number of immigrants in the U.S. illegally is actually the lowest in more than a decade according to the Pew Research latest report. There’s no excuse.

"People in the caravans who want to request asylum, they're looking at months to even be heard first by U.S. authorities, and then for that claim to be processed can take months or even years”

So thousands of asylum seekers with nothing but the shirts on their back and children on their shoulders are desperately knocking on our door, and we’ve purposely slowed down our system so much that it’ll take months before we even ask, “Who’s there?”

Does that adhere to the intent of US asylum law? And it definitely does NOT make us safer. What do think desperate people will do if we treat them like dirt and squelch their hopes of getting asylum legally?

There is a crisis at our border, but it’s an administrative crisis of our own inefficiencies to be able to process cases in a timely fashion. Instead of sending our military, Trump should be sending administrative immigration officials to solve the massive backlog of pending asylum cases. - Merrilee Chapin Avila

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” - 🗽
FACT CHECK: What's Happening On The U.S.-Mexico Border?