In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon killing spree by foreign-born jihadists, see-no-evil bureaucrats in Washington are stubbornly defending America’s lax asylum policies. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano told the Senate Tuesday that the screening process is rigorous, effective and extensive.

These people can’t handle the truth. Or tell it.

The Tsarnaev brothers reportedly were granted asylum by “derivative” status through their parents. After entering on short-term tourist visas, the mother and father (an ethnic Chechen Muslim) won asylum and acquired U.S. citizenship. Next, younger son Dzhokhar obtained U.S. citizenship. Older son Tamerlan, whose naturalization application was pending, traveled freely between the U.S. and the jihad recruitment zone of Dagestan, Russia, last year before the bombers’ gunfight in Watertown, Mass., last week left the Muslim terrorist dead.

[Sidenote: They all received taxpayer-funded welfare benefits, too. No surprise. Did you know jihad preachers have urged their followers to collect welfare bennies while plotting terror?]

Though they had convinced the U.S. that they faced deadly persecution, the Tsarnaevs’ parents both returned to their native land and were there when their sons launched last week’s terror rampage. Authorities will not reveal any details of the sob stories the Tsarnaevs originally spun to win asylum benefits for the entire family.

The whole thing stinks. And it’s an old, familiar stench. Immigration lawyers have been working the system on behalf of asylum con artists for decades. The racketeers coach applicants with phony stories and documents from“chop shops” and game their way through “refugee roulette.”

Asylum and refugee claimants are being rubber-stamped at all-time-high rates. Government data analyzed by the nonpartisan TRAC website show that “the odds of an asylum claim being denied in Immigration Court reached an historic low in FY 2012, with only 44.5 percent being turned down. Ten years ago, almost two out of three (62.6 percent) individuals seeking asylum lost their cases in similar actions. Twenty years ago, fewer than one out of four (24 percent) asylum applicants won their cases, while three out of four (76 percent) lost.”