EXCLUSIVE — Five Senate Republicans Dish On Asylum Rights
"We are a compassionate nation, but we are also a nation of laws," Sen. Katie Britt told us.
Today we asked five Republican Senators if they thought immigrants should be allowed to apply for asylum. Here’s what they had to say.
Our Question — Should migrants have asylum rights, at all?
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS)
“Of course they should, but we need to raise that bar. Right now, too many of them are being caught and released without really any credible fear. So we need to tighten it up a little bit and deal with it much more efficiently. And certainly, this idea of catch and release and waiting for years is not the solution [but] you know when we think of the Statue of Liberty - give us your tired, your poor - Americans want to be compassionate but not at the detriment of our own national security. This is a national security issue to me. It’s not an immigration issue.”
Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE)
“Only under extreme circumstances when they can prove that they are in danger in their home country and cannot find another safe place in their home country [...] credible persecution. The problem is that most of the immigrants coming across the border are abusing that and do not qualify."
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)
“I think asylum is important but the problem is the current system allows about 85% of the people into the country that don’t eventually qualify because they’re released from custody … I think there’s an international treaty which requires us but it doesn’t say how - what the procedures are.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC)
“Well, I mean, you almost have to answer yes because of the treaties that we have. I mean, we have treaty obligations. You could go back - and it may be a good time to ask a question about whether or not our asylum treaties need to be updated, because many of them have been in place since before basically being able to get anywhere in the globe. So we can ask that but we have treaty obligations that we’re not going to breach. … That’s largely why we’ve entered into these treaties - most freedom-loving countries want to be that place where people suffering oppression come. But now, that’s what’s disturbing me now. We’re destroying, we’re poisoning the well about asylum because people are abusing it. And so that, I mean, if people really care about honoring the intent of asylum, they should care about how it’s being exploited right now - by the cartels first among them."
Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL)
“What we have right now is an abuse of both asylum and parole. Obviously those things exist. We are a compassionate nation, but we are also a nation of laws. And we know these things have been exploited to the detriment of our country. And so we’ve got to get this under control. And unfortunately, we see the Biden administration continuing to try and facilitate this crisis and push money and policies that bring more and attract more and more migrants to the United States, instead of actually securing our border. Those people who have been given due process — the 1.3 million that have been set to remove on the non detained docket — we need to be removing those individuals. We’ve got to enforce our actual laws.”