>Many of them say their goal is to settle in the US despite warnings by US officials that anyone found entering the country illegally will face arrest, prosecution and deportation.

You're conflating the word "goal" with the idea of "malicious intention".

Let me give an example: I have a goal to travel to space but I'm not building my own unlicensed rockets with unlicensed materials to do it. This doesn't implicitly mean that I mean or intend to break the law, whatsoever.

Secondarily, as another post already pointed out, asylum can be granted for people who enter illegally, as codified in the US Code[0]:

Any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival and including an alien who is brought to the United States after having been interdicted in international or United States waters), irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum in accordance with this section or, where applicable, section 1225(b) of this title.

If you're going to argue the merits of violating the law as reasons to deny them asylum, (and deport them) then you should, at the very least, be aware of the law's allowance of such action, which they're leveraging to seek asylum, yeah?

In other words, your argument is specious because it entirely discredits the "law of the land", as it were. Not mention, of course, that you fail delineate betwixt "goal" and "intent".

[0] - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1158

It is black letter law that, if you are seeking asylum, your place or method of entry are irrelevant. Asylum claims can even be offered as a defense at criminal immigration hearings.

"Since the basis of your argument is demonstrably false," indeed.

I will say quite plainly that if I were on a jury where a person is on trial for human trafficking, and the person reasonably believed they were only helping asylum seekers, I would find them not guilty. I don't know the letter of the law in this area, but I would find them not guilty regardless of the letter of the law (jury nullification).

More than likely, I suspect the evidence would support this study out of the University of Southern California who found that the asylum narrative is largely a myth and most caravan members are economic migrants:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/nov/28/migrant-car...

“The standard wisdom [that] it’s all about violence could not be supported by our data,” said Detlof von Winterfeldt, a researcher at CREATE.

First, the Washington Times is a notably biased source.

Second, let's please remember that we (the US) fucked those countries up profoundly, to the point that people are fleeing en masse and forming migrant caravans. Fearing for your fucking life because of a puppet government who massacres dissenters is unambiguously grounds for asylum, as far as I'm aware.

Finally, economically-motivated migration and asylum-seeking are absolutely not mutually exclusive. Anyone who has ever tried to claim that these people's motivations are strictly one or the other is selling a narrative, not studying the phenomenon.

EDIT: Also: I don't know the letter of the law in this area...

Then maybe educate yourself before applying fingers to keyboard. You have access to every single source I do on this matter, including the relevant treaties and statutes. Those are the primary source material here, not an opinion piece in a rag whose own masthead proclaims, "The Right Opinion..."