Immigration judges working under the Justice Department have ordered more than 440,000 asylum seekers removed during President Donald Trump’s first 19 months back in office — a figure that exceeds the total from the previous eight years combined, according to a Washington Post analysis of immigration court records cited by Breitbart News.
The removal orders carry immediate practical weight: they authorize Immigration and Customs Enforcement to return migrants to their home countries without the lengthy proceedings that previously stalled many cases. According to Breitbart, many of the denied claims came from economic migrants rather than people fleeing political persecution.
A Dramatic Shift in Approval Rates
The change in outcomes is stark when measured by approval rates. Data from TRACReports.org, a nonpartisan research group that tracks immigration court activity, shows Trump-era judges approved just 5 percent of asylum requests in 2026 — down from 50 percent in September 2023. At that 5 percent rate, only about 800 approvals and 15,000 denials occur each month, according to Breitbart’s reading of the data.
Meanwhile, the backlog of pending asylum claims — which swelled to 3.7 million in 2024 during the Biden administration — has fallen below 3.1 million. That reduction matters beyond statistics: a smaller backlog means asylum claimants spend less time living and working in the United States while their cases are pending.
Breitbart framed the enforcement gains as a direct benefit to American workers, arguing that faster removals nudge wages upward and push rents downward. The outlet also pointed to survey data it said undercuts the premise that most Biden-era migrants were fleeing political threats.
Survey Data and the ‘Asylum Loophole’
According to Breitbart, a 2026 survey of border migrants conducted by pro-migration groups found that only one in 27 migrants even claimed to meet the core requirement for political asylum. Just 3.7 percent of the 364 migrants surveyed said they were fleeing because of their political opinion. By contrast, 54 percent cited “economy and employment” as their motivation for seeking work in the United States.
Breitbart characterized this dynamic as a rational response to policies it attributed to former President Joe Biden’s administration, including his pro-migration border chief Alejandro Mayorkas. The outlet argued that Biden’s deputies released migrants who requested asylum and offered them work permits so they could quickly earn money to repay smugglers.
One Migrant’s Case Draws Scrutiny
The Washington Post article, as described by Breitbart, included what the outlet called a case of a migrant rationally exploiting the system. Grace Calero, a college graduate from Ecuador, flew into the United States on a tourist visa in 2023. According to the Post, her monthly income of about $3,000 in Ecuador placed her among the country’s top earners.
Calero told the Post she began receiving death threats in response to consulting work she had done for local political figures. She said she changed her phone number and took down her social media accounts, but continued receiving threatening letters at her home. She applied for asylum in 2024, and her daughter — now 19 — joined the claim the following year.
In Florida, Calero worked for a marketing company promoting food brands and traveled to different stores around the state, she told the Post. She was eventually detained amid a police investigation that began when her car was smashed by another illegal migrant. She and her daughter left ICE detention after agreeing to return home amid a rush of publicity in Ecuador.
Asylum seekers who do not have a visa or who remain in the United States after one expires are considered unauthorized immigrants.
Costs and Consequences
Breitbart argued that the Washington Post article hides the economic and human costs of Biden-era asylum policies. As an example, Breitbart cited its own 2023 reporting on the U.N. Missing Migrants Project, which estimated at least 349 people either disappeared or died in Caribbean waters the previous year — nearly double the year before.
That toll was the highest since the agency began tracking such deaths in 2014 and is probably an undercount, according to Edwin Viales, a data and research assistant for the U.N. project. “In the bottom of the Caribbean Sea,” Viales said, “there are thousands of remains of migrants who remain unidentified.”
Breitbart also noted that some Biden-era asylum seekers have been charged with or convicted of killing American residents in crimes or auto accidents.
Trump deputy Stephen Miller told reporters during an April 2025 press conference on the White House driveway that the enforcement shift has already saved lives. “The amount of lives that we’ve saved… by shutting down the border … is already in the thousands,” Miller said.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2026/09/24/trump-deputies-deny-440000-asylum-requests/