Following a record-breaking year for illegal border crossings, there has been an increase in the number of outstanding asylum claims to enter the United States.

According to President Joe Biden's own former Border Patrol chief, the Biden administration is to blame for the skyrocketing asylum cases that have produced a record years-long backlog in U.S. immigration courts, Just The News reported.

"Several factors have contributed to this backlog, but the massive increase that we're seeing today can be directly attributed to the Biden administration's border and immigration policies," said Rodney Scott, who headed the Border Patrol in both the Trump and Biden administrations.

"When the Biden administration went against the recommendations of experienced career border security professionals, terminated the Migrant Protection Protocols, canceled the Asylum Cooperative Agreements, and lowered the bar for credible fear determinations," Scott continued.

The former Border Patrol head went on, "they sent a message worldwide and opened the flood gates for anyone that could make up a sad story or recite the one that was provided to them by the cartel and so-called migrant aid organizations operating in Mexico."

Both the Asylum Cooperative Agreements and the Migrant Protection Protocols were put into effect by the Trump administration.

The former, often known as the "Remain in Mexico policy," mandates that those migrants who are applying for asylum must remain in Mexico while they wait for their immigration court hearing as opposed to being imprisoned or released in the United States.

The latter are a collection of agreements established with nations in Central America to reduce asylum fraud and restrict access to refuge in the United States.

The Biden administration tried to eliminate the protocols and stopped the agreements.However, a federal judge put a hold on the administration's continued legal attempts to end Remain in Mexico earlier this month.

At a time when unlawful crossings of the southern border are at record highs and detractors accuse the Biden administration of not doing enough to stop illegal immigration, there is a years-long backlog in asylum requests.

"While Congress owns the blame for leaving known loopholes in our immigration and asylum laws unaddressed, the massive increase in illegal border crossings and associated asylum claims falls squarely on the Biden administration and is a direct result of their failed policies," Scott said.

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University discovered in its most recent evaluation that there are currently more than 1.6 million asylum seekers awaiting hearings in the United States, the highest number ever.

778,084 of these applicants — or about half of the total — are awaiting hearings with asylum officials from the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

The Justice Department's Immigration Courts are currently holding hearings for the remaining half of the population, or 787,882. This figure includes a surge of more than 30,000 additional cases in just the first two months of the fiscal year 2023, October and November.