The Biden administration formally dismantled a Trump-era immigration policy that had forced tens of thousands of asylum-seekers to live in Mexico while they waited for their day in court.
President Joe Biden first suspended the Migrant Protection Protocols program, known as the Remain in Mexico policy, in his first days in office in January. The Department of Homeland Security, which was responsible for implementing it, instructed employees in a memo Tuesday that the program was defunct, a move that has been expected.
“Having now completed the further review undertaken pursuant to Executive Order 14010 to determine whether to terminate or modify MPP, and for the reasons outlined below, I am by this memorandum terminating the MPP program,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas wrote in the memo. “I direct DHS personnel to take all appropriate actions to terminate MPP, including taking all steps necessary to rescind implementing guidance and other directives or policy guidance issued to implement the program.”
The program was implemented in January 2019, and since then, 67,000 people have been enrolled. Migrants who presented themselves to federal law enforcement officers at border crossings and who were arrested after sneaking over the border had been pushed to Mexico to live in tent cities while they waited months for immigration court proceedings.
House Democrats who toured a massive outdoor camp across the border from Brownsville, Texas, in early 2020 lamented the slumlike conditions in the tent city, including insufficient clean water, improper sanitation systems, and a lack of medical care. Asylum-seekers waited even longer in Mexico once the coronavirus pandemic commenced in early 2020 and immigration courts shut down and refused to hear cases.
Mayorkas concluded that the program “had mixed effectiveness in achieving several of its central goals and that the program experienced significant challenges,” including how the number of families traveling to the border increased under a program that was intended to deter people.
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Even while the program was in effect, border authorities released 375,000 people directly into the country. MPP had been intended to keep asylum-seekers from being let go into the United States, but because so many thousands of people came across the border between crossings in 2019, the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement were quickly overwhelmed and unable to return everyone to Mexico.
