Several thousand asylum-seekers whom the Biden administration had forced to remain in Mexico through the duration of their legal proceedings will be admitted into the United States as their cases proceed in court following a district court order issued Monday.
Roughly 5,500 migrants who were enrolled into the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols since President Joe Biden took office 19 months ago are expected to be unenrolled from the border program and permitted into the country, according to immigration policy analysts.
“DHS is committed to ending the court-ordered implementation of MPP in a quick, and orderly, manner. Individuals are no longer being newly enrolled into MPP, and individuals currently in MPP in Mexico will be disenrolled when they return for their next scheduled court date,” DHS said in a statement Monday evening. “Individuals disenrolled from MPP will continue their removal proceedings in the United States.”
Doris Meissner, a former Department of Homeland Security agency head and director of the Migration Policy Institute’s U.S. Immigration Policy Program, said the change means the roughly 5,500 asylum-seekers still waiting in Mexico will be admitted to the U.S. through the ports of entry.
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION SUSPENDS ‘REMAIN IN MEXICO’ POLICY
“They will be granted parole and permitted to be in the U.S. while they continue to pursue their asylum claims,” Meissner wrote in an email.
The DHS announced late Monday that it would suspend MPP, known as the Remain in Mexico program, following a legal battle that dragged out the program despite the Biden administration’s attempts to gut it in early 2021.
Under President Donald Trump, the DHS implemented MPP in 2019 and returned to Mexico approximately 70,000 migrants who claimed asylum after illegally entering the country or entering at ports of entry. Biden twice attempted to halt MPP but was held up in court several times.
Jessica M. Vaughan, policy director for immigration restrictionist group the Center for Immigration Studies, was concerned that the move would affect a far larger group of migrants than Meissner estimated.
“The Biden administration immediately announced that, not only will they shut down MPP completely … but that they are inviting any of the 75,000 people who had been enrolled in MPP under Trump to return to the U.S. border to enter and be allowed to live here for an indefinite time as asylum seekers,” Vaughan wrote in an email. “In other words, Biden is giving them what Trump denied them — a free pass into the U.S. on the pretext of applying for asylum they are unlikely to qualify for.”
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Refugees International’s deputy director for the Americas and Europe, Yael Schacher, said it is critical that the U.S. government “swiftly bring those waiting in Mexico into the United States to pursue their cases.”
Court cases for MPP enrollees have taken six months to complete, Meissner said.
