Good News: Over 12K Fake Asylum Seekers Left The U.S.

This obviously gives the people at CBS News (who won’t offer their homes for the fakers) a sad

Thousands of asylum-seekers abandon their cases as ICE seeks to deport them to nations they aren’t from

Willian Yacelga Benalcazar’s asylum case followed what had become a similar pattern in immigration courts across the country: After telling a judge he feared returning to his home country, the judge ordered his deportation to another one.

Yacelga, who said he fled threats from criminal gangs in Ecuador, was facing removal to Honduras. By March, he had spent five months in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, where he said he caught a virus, had to fight for food and drank water contaminated with chlorine. So he asked to be sent back to his native Ecuador rather than continue to fight his case in the U.S.

“I believe we abandoned the asylum case because the lawyer told me I could be in detention for three, four additional months. I was already sick in there. I couldn’t take it anymore,” Yacelga told CBS News from Ecuador, speaking in Spanish during a phone interview.

“All I wanted was to get out, to be free, because it’s horrible being locked up in there,” he added.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told CBS News Benalcazar entered the U.S. illegally and was deported to Ecuador on April 16.

Why come to the U.S.? There are plenty of other nations, but, most others refuse to allow this type of scam the illegals play. And, yeah, if your asylum claim is denied, go home. Or, fly to another country. We don’t care

The Trump administration’s unprecedented efforts to deport asylum-seekers to third countries have stalled thousands of immigrants’ cases and scared thousands more into giving up their asylum claims, according to a CBS News analysis of recently released federal data and interviews with attorneys and immigration policy experts.

Third-country deportations “have more to do with fear than scale,” said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C. (snip)

In cases where a motion to pretermit was filed, about 16% of asylum-seekers — or roughly 12,300 people — withdrew or abandoned their asylum claims or agreed to voluntarily depart the U.S., immigration court data through March 31 shows.

So it’s working? Great! And it’s keeping lots from coming to the U.S. illegally and claiming fake asylum? Great!

But, that CBS article focused on the asylums

Immigrants are giving up their cases and leaving the U.S. in soaring numbers

Immigrants are giving up their claims for humanitarian protection and opting to depart the United States in exponentially higher numbers under the Trump administration, mostly from the austere confines of federal detention centers where they increasingly face prolonged stays.

Immigration judges issued more than 80,000 “voluntary departure” orders from January 2025 through March of this year, according to court data obtained by the Vera Institute of Justice and shared with The Washington Post. Such orders are granted to immigrants who request to leave on their own terms while giving up the opportunity to seek a new life in the U.S. They are not given a formal deportation order, which could make it easier for them to return legally in the future.

The number of people abandoning their immigration cases is at least seven times as high as the number seen in the last 15 months of the Biden administration, when 11,400 took that option. More than 70 percent of those granted a voluntary departure order during President Donald Trump’s second administration were being held in immigration detention when they made the request, a far higher share than those who departed willingly while Joe Biden was in the White House.

So, that’s working, too.