are not evidence of moderate-to-high levels of fraud, or especially increased fraud as you claimed. I'm confident I could find plenty of anecdotes to say the opposite - they wouldn't be evidence of the opposite of your claim, either. They're a teeny, tiny sample size of anecdotes.

I'm sure you can find articles that say decline rates are going up; I'm sure you could also find articles that say the opposite, depending on the agenda of the author.

The immigration debate is saturated with misleading "facts" that are manipulated to reach the conclusion the person presenting them wants. That is why I have spent so much time researching the actual government data - not random figures or stories I see in articles, but tracking down the raw data to see the true, actual story. (Also why I usually try to link to my data source, so anyone can see the same data to verify that I'm presenting actual facts/stats and not providing misleading data myself.)

If you can point me to actual data or unbiased evidence of your claims, I'm happy to take a look at them and adjust my views, but at this point you've basically tried to argue that a couple TV interviews with migrants disproves years of actual government-provided data.

Regarding the % granted asylum...yes it's low, but for those denied, what percentage is fraud/abuse versus a legitimate claim that just wasn't strong enough (judge: "hey, the gang only killed 2 of your family members so I don't think that's enough - if they'd killed 4 I'd grant asylum")?

There is also clear analysis that shows that people with legal representation have meaningfully higher rates of being granted instead of denied, making a strong case that a decent portion of denials result from things like confusion around the system, process, etc., as opposed to any sort of fraud or false claims.

Additionally, the final ruling depends on the applicant re-telling at trial the identical story they told when they first got here and requested asylum. Makes sense to help prevent fraud. But those two instances are probably two of the most nervous times the person will be in their lives, they're probably exhausted when they first tell it, there could be language barrier issues, etc., and on top of that they're probably telling the story 2+ years apart by the time they get to court. If in the initial telling a woman says she was raped at 1:00 pm on a Tuesday and then a couple years later she says she was raped at 3:30 pm on a Tuesday, the judge could deny the asylum request because of the inconsistency. (And grants/denials vary extremely widely by city and judge, so if you get one of the tougher judges, good luck.)

There are plenty of other reasons a person's request might get denied that have nothing to do with fraud or abuse, as well.

That's not to say that there is *zero* fraud - there will always be some fraud in pretty much everything humans are involved in. How high do you think the fraud rate is? 10% of people are already removed from identifying fraud during the credible fear process.

Detaining human beings, and especially children, in unsanitary and inhumane conditions is a damn high "cost" to pay when all actual data and facts show that the alternative of releasing them has very minimal risk.