The number of illegal border crossings has declined so much that U.S. judges assigned to the U.S.-Mexico border to process asylum requests have been recalled because they have too few cases to hear.
And guess who’s being credited with that drop? President Trump, of course.
Reuters reports (emphasis mine):
The dearth of cases at two Texas facilities where the judges are based can be traced to a sharp drop in illegal border crossings by women and children since U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January.
Eight immigration judges were reassigned from their regular courts to detention centers at the border beginning on March 20 as part of Trump's executive order to curb illegal immigration.
Six of the judges have had full dockets, handling dozens of cases per week. But the two at detention centers housing women and children in Dilley and Karnes County, Texas had so few cases their presence was deemed a waste of resources by the U.S. Department of Justice, according to one of the sources.
In March, the number of parents making the trek with children had dropped a whopping 93 percent from December, the Department of Homeland Security recently reported.
Following through on his campaign promise, President Trump has taken a tough stance on illegal immigration, enacting policies that make nearly all illegal border crossers subject to deportation. The judges were assigned to the border so that cases of those seeking asylum could be heard more quickly, and, if considered ineligible, could be deported more rapidly.
After more than three weeks in Dilley, the judge had no hearings, while the one in Karnes County had four, according to a spokeswoman for the DOJ’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, Reuters reports.
Sounds like a campaign promise kept.