Immigration was a top issue during the 2024 election cycle. The American people are looking to the Trump admin to fix Biden’s mess.
But now Trump’s immigration Chief has uncovered a shocking Biden admin fraud scheme that let millions of illegal aliens in.
Trump Official Exposes Biden’s Immigration Mess of Rampant Fraud, Backlogs Skyrocketing
When Joe Edlow stepped back into his role as director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under President Donald Trump, he braced for the chaos left by years of Biden’s open-border policies. What he found went beyond the expected disaster at the southern border.
Edlow quickly discovered an agency overwhelmed not just by massive asylum claims, but by a complete neglect of fraud detection during the previous administration. Now, he’s leading the charge to root out scams in the system and strengthen safeguards against illegal voting.
“What I didn’t know was what some of our backlogs turned into,” Edlow said. Appointed by Trump in March and sworn in by July, Edlow inherited an agency pushed to the edge after handling over 8.5 million migrant encounters under Biden. He wasn’t shocked by the scale, but the outright indifference to fraud left him stunned.
Before this, Edlow had been chief counsel and deputy director at USCIS during Trump’s first term. Returning now, he faced asylum backlogs that had exploded far beyond what he remembered.
“We had about 450,000 cases that were pending on the asylum active docket,” Edlow said of the end of Trump’s first term. “When I got back, there were over 1.5 million cases.”
“Does anything surprise on me what they were doing? Yeah, what surprised me is they weren’t doing much,” he continued. “We already knew that there was a misalignment of priorities and resources, but that became painfully obvious that really USCIS was acting as kind of the the arm of the administration to help maneuver the parole programs, to do what they could on credible fear and to ultimately try to address the growing border crisis that the Bidens have created.”
Everyday Americans felt the sting of Biden’s illegal immigration surge, which hammered communities and cities across the nation. The fiscal years 2023 and 2024 marked the highest and second-highest numbers of inadmissible border encounters ever recorded, per Customs and Border Protection stats, draining resources and overwhelming local governments. In total, Biden’s team oversaw more than eight million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico line.
This flood of migrants triggered a huge spike in asylum applications, putting immense pressure on USCIS to process them. Back in January 2018, pending affirmative asylum claims stood at about 311,000, based on a Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report. By fiscal year 2022, deep into Biden’s watch, that figure nearly doubled to 625,000. Come 2024, it broke one million for the first time.
Affirmative asylum involves foreigners already in the country not facing deportation, unlike defensive claims from those in removal proceedings. As the border crisis spiraled, Biden’s crew rolled out programs slammed by Republicans as sneaky ways to grant amnesty and hide the border mess.
They started the CHNV initiative, letting over half a million from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela enter legally. They also upgraded the CBP One app for mass asylum applications and extended protections against deportation for various nationalities.
Officials who pushed back against fraud often got sidelined or fired under Biden. “I was punished by the Biden Administration for calling out fraudulent asylum claims while I was an Immigration Judge,” said Matt O’Brien, who worked under both Trump and Biden. O’Brien lost his job after cracking down hard on weak asylum bids.
In 288 cases, he approved asylum in 25, gave other relief in eight, and rejected 255, hitting an 88.5% denial rate—way above the 57.7% average for judges then. This tough stance drew fire from pro-open-border groups.
“And that happened because open borders radicals love immigration fraud. They have treated it as a feature of the system, not a bug,” O’Brien said. “That’s why we currently have hundreds of thousands of Central Americans who have never experienced persecution getting asylum.”
O’Brien, now deputy executive director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, was one of several Trump judges ousted by Biden, sparking GOP probes. Edlow sees a clear “get-to-yes” mindset at USCIS under Biden, where rubber-stamping claims let fraud slip through easily.
Under Trump, though, the focus has shifted to beefing up fraud prevention and restoring trust in the process. In recent months, USCIS has rolled out rules to block non-citizens from voting and exposed abuses in the Special Immigrant Juvenile program, including gang members, s*x offenders, and even suspected k*llers gaming the system.
But Edlow warns this is just the start of a major cleanup. “We’ve got to return the integrity of the immigration system, and that’s really a job for USCIS,” Edlow said.
Trump’s team is determined to fix the damage, ensuring America’s borders and elections stay secure for citizens first.
