Most Illegal Immigrants Questioned Say They Come to Work, While Claiming Asylum: Rep. Randy Weber

Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas) in an interview on NTD's Capitol Report, on April 27, 2022. NTD/Screenshot via The Epoch Times

In the wake of Texas National Guardsman Bishop E. Evan’s drowning while trying to save an illegal border crosser and a federal judge’s decision to temporarily halt the rollback of Title 42, critics of illegal immigration are saying the Biden administration is not upholding the U.S. Constitution and failing to secure the southern border.

Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas), who was just down on the border with a small delegation of Republican Congress members, said Texans are angry that U.S. laws are being violated and that the majority of illegal immigrants file false asylum cases, but are allowed to enter and then released into the United States.

Weber said he has been down to the border over half a dozen times and spoken to the migrants in Spanish to find out why they made the dangerous journey.

“I talked to those coming across and I asked them, ‘Okay … Why are you here? And 99 percent of the time, [they say] they want to work, they want a job, and that’s not part of an asylum claim,” Weber told the host of NTD’s Capitol Report, Steve Lance, in a recent interview.

Asylum, “a discretionary protection from identity-based persecution abroad,” is the most often used and easiest claim to make under the U.S. humanitarian immigration laws, for illegal immigrants to enter and stay in the United States, according to a 2021 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report.

Border Patrol agents apprehend illegal immigrants after they cross the Rio Grande from Mexico into the United States, in La Joya, Texas, on Jan. 14, 2022. Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times

“Asylum is the most robust of these protections and the only one that offers a dedicated pathway to lawful permanent residence and citizenship. It also requires the lowest standard of proof but, unlike the other two, maybe denied for discretionary reasons even to aliens who qualify for it,” the CRS report states.

“We don’t have the manpower or the money to investigate claims of literally—we’ve had 2 million people come across under Biden. We don’t have the kind of money or the manpower. Border patrol was overrun,” said Weber. He said border patrol officers have been turned into caretakers, “and their morale is down. They need to get hazard pay in my opinion.”

“I think that if they do lift Title 42, it'll be a travesty,” Weber added.

Title 42 is a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) order that was put in place in March 2020 under President Donald Trump to slow the spread of COVID-19 by ensuring that only essential travel occurred at U.S. borders.

It is estimated that when the CDC rule ends, double the number of illegal immigrants will be released into the United States, given that in 2021 Customs and Border Patrol had over 1.7 million encounters, estimated to reach 2 million by the end of 2022.

U.S. Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has been criticized for not securing the border, and Weber said all federal officials take an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution—which includes our country’s sovereignty and the health of its citizens, he stressed.

Texas National Guard Specialist Bishop E. Evans in an undated photo. Gov. Greg Abbott

The Epoch Times reached out to Mayorkas’s office for comment.

Recently, Mayorkas released a plan to deal with the increased surge of illegal border crossers, including adding more Border Patrol agents, with the main goal to make processing these people more efficient, while Republicans want to stop illegal entry entirely.

“As you know, we all raise our right hand, take an oath to uphold the Constitution, protect the people of the United States,” said, Weber. How many people like guardsman Evans have to be injured, he asked, “before they will literally say, ‘we’re supposed to protect Americans.’ But our heart goes out to those young people coming across, the families. You know how bad it is in the countries south of us, but our job is to protect Americans first.”