The Biden administration has ended a program used to expel migrants to Mexico as they await immigration proceedings, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement Monday.
The Trump-era policy, which is also known as “Remain in Mexico,” was long fought in the courts after the Texas attorney general sued the Biden administration for ending the program.
“We welcome the U.S. District Court’s decision, which follows the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 30th decision, to lift the injunction that required DHS to reimplement the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) in good faith. DHS is committed to ending the court-ordered implementation of MPP in a quick, and orderly, manner,” DHS said. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Texas Democrat Says He’s Given Up On Border Talks With The White House)
The program will cease enrollment and those currently in the program will be “disenrolled” when they appear for their court date in the U.S., according to DHS.
A migrant I met in Yuma last month was sent back to Mexico, under the Trump-era ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy. He sent me these pictures of the camp in Mexico where he’s awaiting his court hearing, telling me the air conditioning barely works, the food is expired, and it’s filthy. pic.twitter.com/XO6dKvz41C
— Jennie Taer (@JennieSTaer) June 21, 2022
The Biden administration asked a federal judge Monday to abandon his earlier order preventing the end of the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which was accepted.
The move came after the Supreme Court said the Biden administration could abandon the Trump-era policy in a June decision after Republican attorneys general in Texas and Missouri sued, and handed down the judgment to a lower court, according to the Biden administration’s motion. Later, the Fifth Circuit Court asked that the district court reevaluate the case “for further proceedings,” according to the motion.
The Biden administration ended the policy shortly after President Joe Biden was sworn into office on Jan. 20, 2021, but was forced to reinstate it in November 2021 after the Republican attorney’s general sued. Less than 5,000 migrants have been expelled since the program resumed, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“As Secretary Mayorkas has said, MPP has endemic flaws, imposes unjustifiable human costs, and pulls resources and personnel away from other priority efforts to secure our border,” DHS said in Monday’s statement.
Border Patrol agents have encountered a record number of 1,853,837 migrants since October, according to internal CBP data exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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