Florida’s #1 With Asylum Seekers
Bottom Line: From the economy to education Florida’s number one in a lot of ways. That’s included being number one for net migration since the pandemic. However usually when measuring net migration, we’re measuring Americans locating between states. As it turns out it’s not just Americans who prefer to relocate to Florida...it’s asylum seekers too. An updated look at Syracuse University’s Immigration tracker shows there are more southern border asylum seekers looking to set up shop in Florida than anywhere else. Most southern border crossers, or “undocumented migrants”, as they’re officially classified by the federal government, claim they’re asylum seekers as a means of gaming our immigration system. At that point the Biden administration processes them, asks where their desired destination is and provides them with a court date to report to for next steps in their asylum-seeking process. They’re often provided with taxpayer funded relocation services to that destination as well. And that top destination is of course Florida.
According to the Syracuse tracker, entering 2024 there were a total of 481,376 pending asylum cases in Florida’s pipeline. The next closest state was Texas with 458,000+ followed by California at 348,000+. And the top destination within Florida is South Florida. A typical backlog of cases in Florida is under 20,000. Florida has two immigration courts which hear these cases. One in Miami and one in Orlando. The Miami court is the destination for 57% of Florida’s asylum seekers. The backlog is so long that the earliest a case may be heard is four years, with the potential for it to take far longer. Over the past decade asylum has only been granted in 13% of the cases that have been heard – with many migrants which never report for court dates.
Using historical trends this means at a minimum there are effectively over 418,000 illegal immigrants (and counting) in Florida who’ve gamed the asylum system under the Biden Administration. These findings are the latest reminder that what happens at the southern border doesn’t stay at or often even near the southern border.