A damning new report on the Obama administration's immigration policies and actions shows that about half of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border are actually caught, and demands for asylum have exploded 900 percent.

The report done for the Department of Homeland Security said that asylum demands since President Obama came into office and loosened immigration requirements surged from 17,000 to 170,000.



What's more, despite claims that up to 81 percent of all illegals are apprehended crossing the border, just 54 percent actually are, according to the report from Institute for Defense Analyses. The report, done for DHS, is titled " Assessing Southern Border Security."

It was obtained and released by the Center for Immigration Studies.

The head of the center, Mark Krikorian, analyzed the report in a blog post. Among his key takeaways:

For 2015, the estimated apprehension rate of illegal aliens between ports of entry on the southern border is only 54 percent. The report finds that although there has been a steep fall in total illegal entries over the past 15 years, there has not been a steep rise in the probability of apprehension over the same time period. Still, there has been some rise; shockingly, the report's authors find that the estimated apprehension rate between ports of entry in 2005 was only 36 percent.

The report also notes that of illegal aliens crossing at ports of entry — for example, with fake IDs or hidden in vehicles — only 29 percent were estimated to have been apprehended in 2014, and only 39 percent in 2015.

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com