EPSHTEYN: Immigration has been a polarizing issue since President Trump took office in 2017. I went directly to the man in charge of the Trump administration’s immigration and citizenship policy, acting USCIS Director Ken Cuccinelli, to talk about the problems facing our asylum system as well as those on the border. Here’s what he told me.

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CUCCINELLI: In raw numbers, we have over 300,000 cases that have sat for a long period of time. Over half of our backlog is over two years old, means that they haven't had a single case yet, no hearing, etc. That's a real problem, and that's a real result of so many people coming across the southern border illegally who want to -- for economic reasons, who claim asylum, which is traditionally for people who are being persecuted because of their faith or because of their political beliefs. Those are the two main ones. There are others. But clearly we have large numbers of people that don't fit in either of those categories or any other legitimate category and they're just making the claim to get into the system, so they're released into the country. That is the broken part of our asylum system.

EPSHTEYN: Is there a realistic way to solve that broken part of the asylum system?

CUCCINELLI: Well look, the president has tried effort after effort after effort, and he's running into an incredible blocking mechanism in the -- I don't want to say the person, but in the branch of the courts. And they've taken steps with national injunctions that no president has ever suffered under, and I really believe that the courts have collectively been violating the separation of powers, invading the role of the executive branch.

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EPSHTEYN: Here's the bottom line: Liberal activist judges with no proximity to the issue of asylum have consistently stood between the government and their ability to work through the staggering backlog that they face in regard to asylum. If these judges genuinely cared about helping solve the crisis at our southern border, they would enforce the rule of law and let the administration get to work on providing relief to these thousands of people.