The United States and Mexico are expected to formally announce the agreement they allegedly reached to restart a version of former President Donald Trump’s controversial “Remain in Mexico” program which should go into effect next week in San Diego, California and in Brownsville, Laredo and El Paso in Texas.
Citing US and Mexican officials The Washington Post reported that the Biden administration is still ironing out final details of the program after President Biden lost all legal battles in his effort to end it.
His administration was ordered in August by a federal court which sided with the states of Texas and Missouri, to reinstate “in good faith” the asylum seekers program that had been scrapped by the Biden after taking office.
The policy officially known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program will initially target single-adult asylum seekers which will be required to stay in Mexico while they await hearings in US to determine their eligibility and status.
Both DHS and White House were not available for comment.
Back in October, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stressed that MPP did not address the root causes of irregular migration, had endemic flaws and imposed unjustifiable human costs, pulling resources away from other priority efforts.
More than 70,000 asylum-seekers have been subject to Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, introduced in January 2019, which resulted in court tents along the border where migrants could briefly enter for their hearings before returning to Mexico.
Despite being criticized as cruel policy that put migrants at risk of violence and led them to subsist in squalid conditions, Trump administration argued that MPP’s an effective program that keeps illegal immigrants out of the US and reduces the “pull factors” that attract other migrants.
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