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Asylum Visa Fraud and 200,000 Revocations: Jim Pfaff on The Carl Jackson Show | Aug 25, 2026

Published: August 25, 2026
Network: Salem Podcast Network
Analysis: Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff

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The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration is preparing to revoke up to 200,000 visas from so-called asylum seekers, and Carl Jackson opened the August 25, 2026 edition of The Carl Jackson Show by asking Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff for his initial response. Pfaff said the move is appropriate, and then explained the mechanism: these are people who entered on H-1B and H-2B visas, categories that assume the holder returns to his country at some point, and who later filed for asylum in the United States. Turning a temporary work visa into an asylum claim is asylum visa fraud, and Pfaff said the administration is right to treat it that way. From there the hour moved to what noncitizens are actually owed under the immigration code, to ICE arrest footage the show played on air, and to a CNN poll showing that photo ID for voting is not controversial with any racial group in the country.

Topics Covered

• 200,000 Visas: How Asylum Visa Fraud Works
• Due Process: What Noncitizens Actually Get
• Votes, Licenses, and the Census Count
• ICE Is Duty-Bound, and So Is the President
• Voter ID at 85, 82, and 76 Percent
• Key Takeaways

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200,000 Visas: How Asylum Visa Fraud Works

Pfaff started with the paperwork rather than the politics. The visas being reviewed are H-1B and H-2B visas whose holders later sought asylum, issued over a window Pfaff put at roughly 2016 to 2026. That sequence is the whole case. A work visa is issued on the understanding that the person goes home when it expires; an asylum claim asserts that going home is impossible. The same applicant cannot honestly hold both positions, which is why the administration is calling the conversion fraudulent.

“The Trump administration is saying that’s fraudulent, that’s a fraudulent use of the immigration process. And I think that they’re right to consider it that way.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Pfaff placed the visa review inside a longer sequence. It is another item in a train of things Donald Trump is doing to try to clean up what Pfaff called a massive immigration problem, one created mostly by an open border under the Biden administration but also by misuse of the asylum process well away from any border crossing. Asylum visa fraud is the version of the problem that never shows up in a border-crossing statistic, because the entry itself was lawful.

Due Process: What Noncitizens Actually Get

Pfaff anticipated the standard objection to the asylum visa fraud cases: that revoking visas this way violates due process. His answer draws a line the immigration debate usually blurs.

“People here on non-citizen status of any sort, they don’t enjoy the same due process rights.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

There are process protections written into the immigration code that allow for some adjudication, Pfaff said, but they are not the full due process right Americans enjoy. These determinations can be made by the Department of Justice under the advisement of the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of State has certain authorities he or she can undertake — in this case, Marco Rubio. That is the machinery the administration is using, and Pfaff’s judgment on it was unqualified: they are right to do it.

His criticism ran in the opposite direction from the one the administration usually hears. There are reasons, he said, to be slightly critical of the Trump administration for not getting more people out of the country — while adding that they are doing a really solid job, and that this visa review is one step in getting the system back in order.

Jackson pressed the point from the other end, arguing that a business or tourist visa is a privilege extended by the United States, and that claiming asylum in order to stay is asinine when the claimant did not leave home for fear of death or religious persecution but to pursue a better life. His frustration was with the framing: Democrats, he said, talk about deportations as though citizens are being removed, when the people in question are not citizens.

Votes, Licenses, and the Census Count

The asylum visa fraud review covers one slice of the population at issue. When Jackson suggested that the left resists removals because every departure is a lost vote, Pfaff agreed that this is a huge part of it — and then laid out the rest of the incentive structure.

“So this is a plan of the Democrats. It’s part of their strategy.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

He began with the claim conservatives were castigated for making. The left called the Great Replacement Theory false and asked what anyone was talking about; people at the time did not have all the information. Now, Pfaff said, we have it. He pointed to the ruling on the post office, where Marc Elias led the charge to stop the post office from implementing what Donald Trump is attempting to implement to keep illegal immigrants from voting — and to New Jersey, whose own admission Pfaff considers an understatement of the real figures. It is the same pattern documented in our earlier analysis of noncitizen voter registration in New Jersey.

The registration pathway is not mysterious. Many states issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, and the motor voter law — now operating under HAVA after amendment — allows voter registration at the license branch. Pfaff noted that this is recent by American standards: until about the 1990s, a citizen had to go and purposefully register to vote. Automatic registration at the counter changed who ends up on the rolls without anyone deciding to put them there.

The benefits do not stop at the ballot box. The Census Bureau counted illegal immigrants in the census, Pfaff said, and illegal immigrants concentrate in sanctuary cities and sanctuary states that tend to be Democrat states, which adds population to certain congressional districts. His verdict on the result: the last reapportionment, the one the country went through in 2020, was frankly incredibly skewed — and that is one of the reasons for the redistricting battles of 2025 and 2026. Jackson added the downstream prizes: more House seats, more federal funding, and a standing push to abolish the Electoral College.

ICE Is Duty-Bound, and So Is the President

The show played footage of an immigration arrest, and Jackson conceded the obvious point before Pfaff could be asked about it: law enforcement never looks pretty. His argument was that illegal immigration touches every American, including the immigrant who did it legally, and including young people worried about affordability — citing prior interviews with Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies on rental prices falling in some cities as illegal immigrants return home.

The same statutory logic that governs the asylum visa fraud review governs ICE in the field. Pfaff’s read of the video was procedural. Any police force, federal or local, will produce errors here and there. But the authorities ICE is using to carry out these operations are clearly spelled out in the law, with no ambiguity about it. What the footage actually showed, he said, was not simply officers performing their duties but someone resisting officers performing their duties — and that resistance is the part the coverage leaves out.

“Not just are they part of the law that they must do it, they’re duty-bound to do it because that is what they are supposed to do.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

The Gestapo comparisons Democrats reach for work, in Pfaff’s account, by twisting situations as they occur — taking a video like this one, or a story out of one of these arrests, and turning it against the agency. He granted the honest qualification: ICE has surely made mistakes, and someone will always find anecdotal evidence of a bad arrest. Some of those have come out. The vast majority are entirely legal.

He then applied the same standard to the president, and it cuts both ways. Enforcement is overblown as a controversy during this administration, Pfaff said — everyone complains about it when it happens under any administration, though the focus and degree Trump brings to it are greater than presidents who have not been strong about it. To be candid, he added, the Obama administration put a great deal of effort into ICE deportations, with overall numbers greater than what Trump has been able to reach so far. Nobody criticized Obama for doing the same thing.

“Donald Trump must do it or he’s not upholding the office of president. The laws on the books, he is required to enforce.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Cabinet members and administration officials assigned these duties are directed to carry them out properly, and the president is duty-bound to direct them. The lawlessness that existed under the Biden administration and many administrations before it is an outrage, Pfaff said, and Americans should be upset if Trump were not doing this. Jackson added the practical obstacle: judges were not activists toward Obama and let everything fly through, while literally everything Trump does becomes a fight in the court system — which is why he argued Republican presidents need to fill cabinet positions as quickly as possible and fight for the courts.

Voter ID at 85, 82, and 76 Percent

The second clip was CNN’s own polling on photo identification, and the numbers left little room for argument: 85% of white Americans favor requiring a photo ID to vote, 82% of Latino Americans, and 76% of Black Americans. As the analyst put it in the clip, voter ID is not controversial in this country — not by party and not by race — and the vast majority of Americans agree with Nicki Minaj that you should have a photo ID to be able to vote.

Jackson offered a theory: when CNN puts numbers like these on air, it is a warning to Democrats that this is not a hill to die on. Pfaff allowed some of that, but said the numbers propagate themselves as CNN shares them alongside everything else, and he returned to his standing view of the electorate.

“The American people are not dumb. They do know what’s going on.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

They are often slow on the uptake when it comes to elections and policy, he said, but they ultimately get it. Roughly 25 to 30% of Americans are so radicalized on the left and such committed Democrat voters that their minds cannot be moved. But in 2024, independents, Hispanic voters, and a large number of voters in the Black community went for Donald Trump because they got frustrated with what had been happening. So the poll is a message — and the Democrats are not taking it. They are doing the opposite and fighting these measures.

The failure Pfaff dwelt on was on his own side. Support for voter ID around the country is massive, and Republicans will not act on it by passing the Save America Act.

“John Thune has been entirely a wimp.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Most of the problems Democrats have caused in this country, Pfaff argued, trace back to Republican leadership fecklessness, cowardice, and an unwillingness to press the agenda the American people are striving for. That is part of the reason Donald Trump became president and got elected twice. The message is there; Democrats are not getting it, and Republicans should get it and are not. Jackson, invoking Michael Savage’s borders, language, culture, made the case for the voter ID requirement in the Save America Act against conservatives who argue it would not make much difference: voters need to know their elections are secure and their vote is not being nullified by a fraudster, and states like California, where anybody can show up without ID, should not be able to continue as they are. He pointed to James O’Keefe’s footage from what he recalled was Minnesota, where one person could vouch for roughly eight others.

Pfaff closed on the midterms. The Democrat Socialists of America, he said, are becoming an ick factor — highlighted by Abdul El-Sayed’s weird appearance on Jesse Watters while running for Senate in Michigan — and Republicans need to take advantage of it.

Key Takeaways

1. The 200,000 visas are an asylum visa fraud case – Holders entered on H-1B and H-2B visas in a window Pfaff put at roughly 2016 to 2026, then filed for asylum. Those visas assume the holder returns home, so the administration is calling the conversion a fraudulent use of the immigration process — and Pfaff said it is right to.
2. Noncitizens do not have full due process rights – That is why the asylum visa fraud revocations can proceed. The immigration code provides some adjudication, but not the due process Americans enjoy. The Department of Justice can act under the advisement of the Secretary of State, currently Marco Rubio.
3. New Jersey admitted 400 to 500 illegal votes and 6,600 on the rolls – Pfaff said those figures are understated, and that hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants are registered nationally. Driver’s licenses plus motor voter registration under HAVA is the pathway.
4. The census count skewed reapportionment – The Census Bureau counted illegal immigrants, who concentrate in sanctuary cities and states, adding population to certain congressional districts. Pfaff called the 2020 reapportionment incredibly skewed and traced the 2025-2026 redistricting battles to it.
5. ICE’s authority is spelled out in statute – There is no ambiguity about it, officers are duty-bound to act, and the president is duty-bound to direct them. Obama’s deportation numbers were higher than Trump’s so far and drew no comparable criticism.
6. Voter ID has 76-85% support and still no vote – 85% of white, 82% of Latino, and 76% of Black Americans favor photo ID. Pfaff’s explanation for the inaction: John Thune has been entirely a wimp.

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About The Conservative Caucus:
The Conservative Caucus is a grassroots public policy action organization, formed in 1974. Headed by President Jim Pfaff, the Caucus is committed to advancing free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values.

Originally broadcast Aug 25, 2026 on Salem Podcast Network’s The Carl Jackson Show.