America’s immigration system is a mess, and the new U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director, Joe Edlow, is sounding the alarm. Returning to the role under President Donald Trump, Edlow has walked into a bureaucratic nightmare that ballooned under the previous administration. It’s a story of backlogs, border chaos, and a desperate need for reform.
According to The Daily Caller, under Edlow’s watch, USCIS is tackling a staggering backlog of over 1.5 million asylum cases while confronting rampant fraud and record-breaking migrant encounters at the southern border.
Let’s rewind a bit to set the stage. Edlow, who previously served as chief counsel and deputy director during Trump’s first term, was nominated again in March 2025 and sworn in by July. His experience gave him a front-row seat to what worked—and what didn’t—in immigration policy.
Upon his return, Edlow was floored by the numbers. “When I got back, there were over 1.5 million cases,” he told the Daily Caller News Foundation, a far cry from the 450,000 pending asylum cases at the end of Trump’s first term. That’s a tripling of the workload, folks, and a clear sign of mismanagement.
During the Biden administration, the southern border saw a staggering 8.5 million migrant encounters over four fiscal years. Fiscal years 2023 and 2024 ranked as the worst and second-worst for inadmissible border encounters in history, per Customs and Border Protection data. If that’s not a crisis, what is?
Meanwhile, affirmative asylum claims—those made by foreign nationals already in the U.S. and not facing deportation—nearly doubled from 311,000 in January 2018 to 625,000 by the end of fiscal year 2022. By 2024, they surpassed one million for the first time. It’s a tidal wave of applications that’s drowning the system.
The Biden team didn’t just sit idly by—they rolled out initiatives like the CHNV program, which allowed over half a million Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan nationals to enter the country. They also revamped the CBP One app to streamline mass asylum applications and extended deportation protections for citizens of several nations. While intended to manage the flow, these moves have been criticized as opening the floodgates.
Edlow didn’t mince words about the previous administration’s priorities. “Does anything surprise me about what they were doing? Yeah, what surprised me is they weren’t doing much,” he quipped, pointing to a lack of focus on immigration fraud. It’s a polite jab, but one that cuts deep into the heart of policy failures.
Then there’s the issue of personnel shakeups. Several Trump-appointed immigration judges, including Matt O’Brien, were removed under Biden, sparking GOP-led investigations. O’Brien, with an 88.5% denial rate for asylum cases compared to the average 57.7%, clearly wasn’t aligned with the progressive agenda.
O’Brien himself pulled no punches about his dismissal. “I was punished by the Biden Administration for calling out fraudulent asylum claims while I was an Immigration Judge,” he told the Daily Caller News Foundation. It’s a damning accusation that suggests ideology trumped merit.
He went further, arguing that certain factions embrace fraud as part of the system. “And that happened because open borders radicals love immigration fraud,” O’Brien stated, highlighting how hundreds of thousands of Central Americans, many without clear persecution claims, have received asylum. It’s a bold claim that fuels the conservative push for stricter oversight.
Edlow’s mission now is crystal clear. “We’ve got to return the integrity of the immigration system, and that’s a job for USCIS,” he emphasized. It’s a tall order, but one that resonates with those who believe the system has been exploited for far too long.
Under the Trump administration, USCIS is already taking steps to address these systemic issues. Recent measures to prevent foreign nationals from voting in U.S. elections signal a broader effort to tighten controls. It’s a move that’s sure to please those worried about election integrity.
Fraud isn’t just a border issue—it’s embedded in programs like the Special Immigrant Juvenile initiative, where USCIS uncovered involvement by adult gang members, sexual predators, and even alleged murderers. This isn’t just paperwork; it’s a public safety concern that demands urgent action.
As Edlow and his team dig into this mess, the road ahead looks daunting but necessary. Restoring trust in immigration processes won’t happen overnight, especially with millions of cases pending and border encounters at historic highs. Yet, for those who value the rule of law over unchecked migration, his leadership offers a glimmer of hope in a system long overdue for a reckoning.
