After a federal court put an end to the lengthy legal back-and-forth over President Joe Biden’s efforts to end the “Remain in Mexico” border policy, the US border officials suspended on Monday the Trump-era policy.
The Department of Homeland Security suspended the rules that required certain migrants to wait for their asylum hearings in Mexico, formally called Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), after US District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk lifted the injunction earlier on Monday.
This legal victory, however, will have a limited impact on current US border policy since a very small percentage of migrants was enrolled in the program by the Biden administration. It only remains a win for the asylum-seekers advocates who have called the Remain-in-Mexico policy inhumane and draconian.
The department said in a statement that DHS is committed to ending the court-ordered implementation of MPP in a quick and orderly manner so the individuals disenrolled from MPP could continue their removal proceedings in the US while individuals currently in MPP in Mexico will be disenrolled when they return for their next scheduled court date.
No new individuals will be enrolled into MPP which, according to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, imposes unjustifiable human costs and pulls resources and personnel away from other priority efforts to secure our border with the endemic flaws.
The Trump-appointed Kacsmaryk was asked by the DOJ lawyers requested to take the action in light of the decision of the Supreme Court earlier this summer to dismiss legal points raised by GOP officials in Missouri and Texas.
Judge Kacsmaryk upheld these points in his ruling last year.
His latest ruling comes more than a year after the Biden administration first moved to terminate the Remain-in-Mexico policy.
According to government data, 5,764 migrants have been returned to Mexico under the policy since the MPP was reinstated in December 2021 when the US border officials reported record levels of unlawful migration, processing over 1.4 million migrants.
Be the first to comment