The Asylum Issue

I've been reading up on that asylum issue lately and, as usual, it's more complicated than I thought.  Apparently there is a law on the books that says, if you apply for asylum at the border, they have to schedule a hearing for you.  What these guys have been doing is, after sneaking across the border, they turn themselves in and request asylum.  So many of them have been doing this that they have overloaded the system, so it might be a long time before their hearings come up.  Meanwhile, they are allowed to remain in the country, and many of them don't even show up for their hearing, they just drift away and are never heard from again.

In an effort to discourage this practice, the Trump administration has implemented a "zero tolerance" policy to replace the old "catch and release" policy. All illegals are being arrested and prosecuted for crossing the border illegally which, I was surprised to find out, is only a misdemeanor crime.  The reason families are being separated is because they can't put the children in jail with their parents. (I had that part right.)  The court appointed lawyers have been advising their clients to plead guilty to the misdemeanor, just to get that part over with.  Most of them are being sentenced to "time served" and then released, so this isn't working out much better than the old "catch and release" policy.  The illegals' main concern is getting reunited with their children, and I'm not sure how that's been working out.  Last I heard, some children were getting "lost" in the overloaded system.

The latest Attorney General ruling says that the asylum law is intended to protect people who are being persecuted by their own government, not to protect people from all sorts of other dangers like domestic and gang violence.  I tend to agree with that because I seem to remember they used to call it "political asylum" back in the days of the Cold War.  It seems to me that the illegals have been exploiting the asylum law and, like I said, overloading the system.  I don't know what the answer is, maybe they need to set up some family friendly detention centers along the border.  They wouldn't be like jail or prison, just places where they can keep an eye on them until their hearings come up.  I seem to remember they did something like that when all those Cuban refugees flooded in faster than they could be processed.  Before that there was Ellis Island, but that was designed for immigrants from Europe and not conveniently located to serve the current need.