Right now the asylum program is being grossly abused and that needs to be addressed ASAP.

It's not being grossly abused.

As I mentioned upthread, about 30-40% of asylum cases are resolved in favor of the applicant(s). That's actually a really high win rate, given that nearly all of these folks are poor, don't necessarily speak English, and most don't have access to a lawyer (unlike criminal cases, the government doesn't have to provide them with counsel). On a level playing field, it's more likely than not that asylum would be granted in a given case.

That's completely inconsistent with the idea that these are mostly pretextual claims. The issue isn't people grossly abusing the system - the issue is that conditions are such in large areas of the continent (and other parts of the world, but it's the Central Triangle that's really a big source of these cases) that so many people qualify for asylum.

That's the reason why the GOP won't give the Democrats what Democrats want to fix the system - more immigration courts and more immigration judges, to cut the wait times down from years to months. Because the GOP knows that these aren't pretextual claims, and the program isn't being grossly abused. If you let people have their asylum claims be quickly and fairly heard, rather than being a years-long drawn out process where they can't work to support their families, then that ends up with too many successful asylum cases. And it would deprive them of a powerful political point. They don't want to go back to their constituents and have to explain that, no, these aren't terrible people but actually people that are justifiably and legitimately seeking asylum in our country, as the law says they can.

The problem is that making things unnecessarily more horrible for the asylees also makes things more horrible for the communities that they're in while they wait for the hearing they're legally entitled to. But that's just collateral damage from the policy of not having enough judges and courts. Typically, if people are waiting four+ years for their trial date, the obvious solution would be to hire some more judges so they don't have to wait that long - but that's politically unpalatable for the GOP, so they try to avoid it. And to cover that failure, they try to persuade their constituents that the system is being abused, rather than being starved for resources.