The goal was to prevent illegal immigrants from making fraudulent asylum claims that gave them a pathway to await their court appearance while living in the US.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has
reinstated the “Remain in Mexico” program that sends asylum seekers who traveled through Mexico, back to Mexico rather than allowing them to reside in the United States while awaiting notice to appear in immigration court.
The “Remain in Mexico” program, officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), was first enforced in January 2019.
According to
U.S. code, anyone who comes to the border is given an opportunity to have their asylum claims considered.
The Immigration and Nationality Act authorizes federal authorities to return those immigrants “as a matter of enforcement discretion” back to Mexico “pending a removal proceeding” under Section 240 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, a 2019 DHS
memo stated.
The MPP was
approved and signed into law in 1996 during the Clinton administration, but was not officially enforced until 2018 when DHS Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen announced its implementation.
The goal was to prevent illegal immigrants from making fraudulent asylum claims that gave them a pathway to await their court appearance while living in the United States.
The MPP policy was suspended by the Biden administration on Jan. 21, 2021, in a
memorandum, but a court ruling in August 2021 established that the rules had not been properly rescinded.
Until Oct. 29, 2021, Acting Secretary David Pekoske, and later DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “repeatedly attempted to suspend or terminate the MPP Policy,” DHS said on Tuesday. “Following a series of legal actions, Secretary Mayorkas’s final attempt to terminate the MPP Policy was stayed by a federal court.”
The Department of Justice eventually dismissed the Biden administration’s appeal and submitted to keeping the MPP in place “for the foreseeable future.”
The reason for enacting the MPP, the DHS said
in 2019, is that the United States “is facing a security and humanitarian crisis on the Southern border” and must use “all appropriate resources and authorities to address the crisis and execute our missions to secure the borders, enforce immigration and customs laws, facilitate legal trade and travel, counter traffickers, smugglers and transnational criminal organizations, and interdict drugs and illegal contraband.”
Since that statement, the crisis to which the DHS pointed to during the first Trump administration has escalated.
On his Inauguration Day, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border, among other executive actions related to border security that he said would bring illegal entry to a stop.
“Our southern border is overrun by cartels, criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers, unvetted military-age males from foreign adversaries, and illicit narcotics that harm Americans, including America,” Trump wrote in a
declartion.Over the last four years under the Biden administration, the crisis has resulted in “widespread chaos and suffering,” he added.
The declaration states that due to the “gravity and emergency of this present danger,” the Armed Forces must assist the Department of Homeland Security “in obtaining full operational control of the southern border.”
Matthew Vadum and Darlene McCormick Sanchez contributed to this report.
