11. HUMANE, SECURE & FAIR IMMIGRATION AND BORDER POLICY

America’s immigration system is overwhelmed, outdated, and failing to meet the realities of 21st-century migration. For decades, Congress has treated immigration as a political weapon instead of a solvable policy problem. The result is a system that is unsafe, inefficient, and unfair to immigrants, border communities, cities, workers, and taxpayers alike.

The asylum system is paralyzed by years-long backlogs because the federal government lacks sufficient judges, officers, and support staff to process cases in a timely way. Families wait years for court dates while cities and states absorb arrivals without predictable federal funding or coordination. This turns migration into a constant crisis instead of a managed, lawful process.

Large portions of the border are effectively unmanaged—not because of policy choice, but because of staffing shortages, outdated equipment, and misallocated resources. At the same time, the majority of illicit drugs, weapons, and human trafficking move through legal ports of entry, where Customs and Border Protection lacks modern screening technology and adequate staffing to stop them efficiently.

Immigration enforcement authority is fragmented, inconsistent, and poorly defined. Standards vary widely across regions, detention decisions are often arbitrary, and enforcement priorities shift with politics rather than evidence or public safety. This confusion fuels civil-liberties violations, erodes trust in government, and produces unpredictable outcomes that serve no one.

ICE has become a central driver of these failures. It operates with broad, poorly constrained authority, limited transparency, and minimal real-time oversight. Its structure incentivizes detention and enforcement over due process, legal resolution, or community stability. This is not a problem of individual misconduct—it is a systemic design failure.

Millions of undocumented residents who have lived in the United States for years — working, paying taxes, and raising families - have no realistic legal pathway to come into compliance with the law. Employers exploit this legal limbo to suppress wages, while politicians blame immigrants instead of fixing the broken system that enables abuse.

Local communities, especially major cities, are overwhelmed not because the border is “open,” but because Congress refuses to provide stable federal funding tied to housing, employment assistance, legal services, and municipal capacity. ICE enforcement does nothing to solve these challenges and often makes them worse by destabilizing families and communities without resolving legal status.

Every part of the system is failing:

• Asylum seekers face impossible delays.

• Border communities lack resources.

• Cities and states receive no predictable support.

• Law enforcement lacks modern tools and clear standards.

• Long-term undocumented families have no legal path forward.

• Criminal trafficking networks exploit systemic chaos.

• Businesses face uncertainty.

• Taxpayers fund a system that delivers neither order nor justice.

Immigration reform has been promised for decades. Maintaining ICE in its current form has not fixed the system - and will not fix it. A functional immigration system requires dismantling failed enforcement structures, reallocating resources toward lawful processing and oversight, and rebuilding immigration governance around due process, accountability, and public safety.