If Congress is willing to find more immigration judges, it’d be crazy to say “no,” since we desperately need to work through the huge backlog of asylum cases. But Trump is right that we should (at least in many more cases) be simply turning around migrants and returning them.

One reason we don’t is that so many claim asylum and pass their initial “credible fear” interviews. About 90 percent pass these interviews, even though less than 20 percent ultimately get asylum. Clearly, we should be tightening up on the front end before a migrant making a dubious claim enters into a years-long legal process.