Department of Homeland Security confirmed to Breitbart News that over the course of a few weeks,
the U.S. Border Patrol and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will release more than 2,000 family units caught at the U.S.-Mexico border, citing a lack of detention space.
Bed space for families at detention centers is an issue at the Yuma, Arizona sector of the border, as well as in San Diego, California, El Paso, Texas, and the Rio Grande Valley sector of the southern border.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform's Ira Mehlman said this is a chronic, ongoing problem, that isn't going away.
"So people understand that, basically, kids are a get out of jail free card. You arrive here. You offer some bogus claim for political asylum in the United States, in many cases, and within three weeks you're out on the street,” said Mehlman.
He said the objective is just to get into the US, because if an illegal doesn't show up for court or asylum claim isn't approved, the government might go looking for them, but probably won’t find them.
"Once they're in the United States, especially if they have kids, essentially they're home free, it doesn't matter whether their asylum claim has any validity or not, they're going to be here indefinitely," said Mehlman.
He said the objective should be people make their asylum claims before they enter the US, a reasonable determination is made and proceed from there.
Mehlman said Congress could pass a law that allows for family detention for a certain time frame (currently it’s 20 days) and determine the merit of asylum claims. If asylum is not granted, then they return to their home country as a family unit.
But, that most likely won't happen now with a divided Congress and the focus on ending the partial government shutdown. Immigration courts are effected by the shutdown. He added there's not a political will in America to actually solve problems.
Mehlman said the wall is extremely effective, the caravan that headed to border between Tijuana and California, most of the people are still in Mexico.
Reportedly, illegal immigration projections for next year will reach 600,000 border crossings, the highest level of illegal immigration in more than a decade.