Oops!

Supporters of asylum tend to also support liberal immigration rules.  But the Center for Immigration Studies suggests that you can't always have both:

Open borders are rendering some asylum claims arguably pointless, particularly when it comes to claims based on fear of gangs.

An activist group has joined forces with a law firm in pressuring DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder to overturn a recent immigration court decision that denied an asylum claim by a number of young Salvadoran aliens. The youths claimed that they had fled their country in 2004 because of threats from the violent gang Mara Salvatrucha, aka MS-13. The relevant documents are available here.

In recommending the granting of asylum, the aliens' expert witness testified that El Salvador's police are not capable of controlling MS-13 and as a result the gang grows through forcible recruitment of youths who live within an MS-13 controlled zone.

But can the United States be considered a safe haven from such recruitment efforts? Due to lax border security, our own law enforcement is not doing a spectacular job of stopping the spread of MS-13. As the Center for Immigration Studies documented in a recent report on gangs and immigration law, "Taking Back the Streets," MS-13 recruitment efforts in the United States are at an all-time high as measured by the gang's growth and nationwide expansion. The Central American immigrant communities here in the United States are routinely threatened by MS-13 gang crime and young children are prime targets for violence and recruitment.