Trump Immigration Policy: Ex-ICE Director Calls President's Recent Comments 'Single Dumbest I've Ever Heard'

While President Trump has made immigration his centerpiece policy issue, some experts continue to contend that he has a weak grasp on the legal process for asylum seekers.

Trump on Friday repeated a plea to Congress to overhaul immigration laws while once again dialing up the rhetoric by asking lawmakers to take bolder steps.

“Congress has to act. They have to get rid of catch and release, chain migration, visa lottery — they have to get rid of the whole asylum system because it doesn’t work," Trump told reporters.

"And frankly, we should get rid of judges. You can’t have a court case every time somebody steps their foot on our ground."

CNN anchor John Berman on Monday morning asked former acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement John Sandweg about Trump's comments to eliminate immigration judges. Sandweg called it "the single dumbest idea I've ever heard."

“The reality is our asylum laws guarantee that [if] you set your foot on American soil and you say you’re fearful of persecution in your home country, you get a hearing before an immigration judge to prove that or not prove that before you’re deported,” Sandweg said.

Sandweg continued with an explanation into the many obstacles for asylum seekers.

"The reality is that the majority of the people coming across — only about 20% of them — are actually getting asylum and that number fluctuates quite a bit," he said. "But very few of them are actually getting asylum. The problem we are facing is we don't have enough immigration judges to process the cases quickly.

"So when you have these kinds of numbers — let’s say a 100,000 [crossings] this month, as was predicted earlier in the month — what that means is those people arriving today are dealing with only 300 judges. It’s going to be years before they have their hearing."

Sandweg noted that there is growing frustration with the asylum process and that Trump is looking to pressure Congress to get rid of the current laws.

“But the practical reality is the Democratic Congress is never going to get rid of these asylum laws."

While Trump wants to eliminate judges, Sandweg would like to see much more of them.

"So what we need to do is the exact opposite of what the president is saying: flood the zone with the rule of law, surge the number of immigration judges, process these cases quickly.

"And unless and until we start sending people back home, and unless and until we fix the situation where when they come up here they can stay for five years — waiting for their asylum hearing — this crisis is likely to continue."

Sandweg isn't alone in expressing bewilderment over Trump's current and past comments. Trump in June 2018 said, "thousands and thousands of judges they want to hire — who are these people?"

"This is akin to declaring that we must end due process for asylum seekers, and with it, our international humanitarian commitments on this front," wrote the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent on Thursday.

Cristobal Ramon, a policy analyst with BPC’s Immigration Project, noted in July 2018 for Washington, D.C.-based think tank Bipartisan Policy Center that there were too many immigration cases for such a low number of judges.

Ramon cited the heavy backlog of cases that grew from 186,108 in 2008 to 714,067 in 2018.

"As the backlog expands, however, the nation’s 321 immigration judges each process approximately 678 cases every year as of 2018, which is only 35 percent of the average 1,900 new cases they receive annually. As a result, the increased backlog has left most defendants waiting an average of two years before appearing before a judge, with the system completing fewer removals and asylum cases every year," he wrote.