On Friday, the House Judiciary Committee released data it obtained from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that shows that of the children who are coming across the southern border, nearly two-thirds who requested asylum this year have had their initial applications approved.

This means that the U.S. government thinks that the children are fleeing from danger in their home countries and that they cannot return, which will make it tougher to deport most of them in the future.

According to the data, 65 percent of applications for asylum from unaccompanied children are approved. And, even if the application is not approved, an appeal can be requested, which means the total number who end up staying will be higher. These numbers do not account for those that never ask for asylum and just disappear into the U.S., or for those who spend years here waiting for their court dates.

Asylum approval rates have increased dramatically in recent years from 28% in 2007 to 46% in 2013, and approval rates by immigration judges in affirmative cases have increased from 51% in 2007 to 74% in 2013. This means the vast majority of illegal aliens who claim asylum are successful in their claims.

And, this information comes at the same time an internal Homeland Security report shows that at least 70% of asylum cases contain possible or proven fraud.

Human smugglers, whose business is booming right now, have told Central Americans that if they can get to the U.S. border, they will be processed and released into the U.S., where they can disappear.

Republicans and Democrats remain at odds over the issue. Republicans say if the U.S. shows potential border crossers that they will be turned back at the border, or quickly deported, less people will try to make the journey.

But, the Democrats and the Obama administration continue to say that these children and families are surging our borders right now to flee violence and poverty in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) released the statement below along with the report:

President Obama’s refusal to crack down on rampant asylum fraud is one of the many reasons we are witnessing a surge of Central Americans seeking to enter the U.S. illegally at the border. New data showing that the vast majority of Central Americans’ asylum claims are immediately approved will only worsen the situation along our southern border by encouraging more to come and take advantage of the situation. Our asylum laws are in place to help individuals who are facing truly serious persecution in their countries. However, while I was in the Rio Grande Valley earlier this month, law enforcement officials on the ground said that the vast majority of Central Americans arriving at our border come to meet up with another family member who is already in the United States illegally.

President Obama has many tools at his disposal to stop this border crisis, including cracking down on fraudulent asylum claims and implementing tougher standards for preliminary asylum screenings. Unfortunately, he refuses to use these tools and instead makes the situation worse by refusing to enforce our immigration laws.

When one thinks about the border crisis we are currently facing, with thousands of children coming across the border from Mexico into the United States, images come to mind of little ones traveling through hostile territory all alone. Mexican territory that is controlled by drug cartels, gangs, and all other kinds of unseemly characters and possibly dangerous scenarios.

In a period of nine months (October 2013 to June 2014) almost 60,000 unaccompanied minors, most who are from Central American countries, have come into the United States, by crossing through Mexico. That’s nearly double the number from the previous year.

And the media and the administration are helping to paint the picture that one gets when thinking about it. But, are these children really “unaccompanied?”

If you really think about the semantics of it, there is no way that all these children are coming in “on their own,” like we keep hearing over and over again in news stories and from politicians. They may not be with their parents, which is really what the term “Unaccompanied Alien Children” (UAC) means, but they are, more often then not, not making that trip alone.

To travel alone they would have to walk, at a very bare minimum, 1220 miles across the mountains and deserts of Mexico, by themselves, with no equipment, food, protection from the sun, or shelter along the way. And, they would have to navigate their way across Mexico, on their own, and not get stopped or caught by Mexican officials, or, even worse, drug cartels and Mexican gangs. And, do all this without dying along the way.

That’s like sending your 10 year old on a trip from Houston, TX to 100 miles past Minneapolis, MN, on their own, on foot, with only a backpack on them. And, to give them an edge, this would be minus the drug cartels and Mexican gangs, as well as the higher temperatures in Mexico that the border children are enduring. How do you think your child would fare, and how long do you think it would take them?

Unaccompanied? Yeah, that’s not what’s happening, despite the picture that is being painted by the media.

According the The Washington Post’s Joshua Partlow, that term is “somewhat misleading.” In a piece he wrote recently he said:

The “unaccompanied minors” who walked out of the brush on the banks of the Rio Grande and turned themselves into Border Patrol officers last month were not, technically, unaccompanied. In the group of 15 people that we watched that night, about half of them appeared to be adults, including men and a woman carrying a baby, in addition to several children.

It’s the most potent image in the current immigration crisis: Tens of thousands of Central American children on a dangerous solo exodus out of their countries. But from what I’ve seen reporting on this issue from the U.S. border and in Honduras, it is also somewhat misleading.

The term “Unaccompanied Alien Children,” or UACs, as used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, refers to people up to age 17 who are traveling without a parent or legal guardian. It does not mean they are traveling alone.

In migrant shelters in Mexico and Honduras, talking to both children and adults who are making these journeys, or have been deported after failing to reach the United States, the most common scenario seems to be children who are traveling in groups that include adult relatives, neighbors, smugglers or others. Often the children migrating already have one or more parents living in the United States, and they are considered “unaccompanied,” even if traveling with other adult relatives.

In his article, Partlow concludes that children actually traveling alone “seems to be the exception.” So, the term “unaccompanied” is mostly a legal term, meaning that the child’s actual parent or guardian is not with them.

While the whole situation is sad, and one can’t help but feel for the children who are no longer with their parents, this certainly puts things in a different context then how it is being portrayed. The media and political narrative conjures up images of children making a gut-wrenching and harrowing journey, that would have surely been more dangerous then staying put with their families would have been, no matter how bad the economic crisis or violence in their home countries was, to enter into the sanctuary of the United States.

Honduran President Juan Hernandez said the U.S. should help his country, as well as Guatemala and El Salvador with funding to fight gangs and create anti-drug programs similar to those in Mexico and Columbia, as well as supply funding to lift up impoverished regions in the countries.

“One has to recognize that our countries can’t do it alone,” President Hernandez said at a conference about the children fleeing for the United States. “We need help from the United States, from Mexico, because this is everyone’s problem.”

Hernandez, who took office in January, said U.S. backed battles against cartels in Mexico and Colombia have pushed drug traffickers into Central America, which has increased violence and caused the exodus.

Honduran Foreign Minister Mireya Aguero said that efforts to beef up security at the U.S. border were not working and that U.S. aid to them would be better spent.

“It’s much more practical for the United States to launch a mini-Marshall plan, as they did after World War Two,” she said, “to create opportunities and really get to the root of the problem in Central American countries that is fueling migration.”

This came just two days after the first charter flight out of New Mexico returned 17 Honduran women, as well as 12 girls and nine boys between the ages of 18 months and 15 years, to San Pedro Sula, the city with the highest murder rate in the world.

The White House said on Tuesday, after that flight, they are trying to send a message that “they will not be welcomed to this country.”