A U.S. (Washington Insider Magazine) – federal judge on Aug. 13 ordered President Joe Biden’s administration to re-implement a policy initiated by his predecessor, Donald Trump, which requires immigrants seeking asylum to remain on the Mexican side of the border during their application process.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump administration appointee based in Amarillo, Texas, said that the Biden administration has “failed to consider several critical factors” before ending the program, Axios reports.
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) decision under Biden reversed the previous administration’s decision to keep asylum-seekers attempting to enter U.S. soil on the Mexican side of the state border.
Trump’s decision in early 2019 had kept potential immigrants from entering. Critics said the practice was inhumane because conditions are relatively worse than on the U.S. side.
“Defenders of the policy said it reduced pressure on overburdened immigration officials,” Reuters reported. “Human rights groups said it violated due process and exposed destitute refugees to the risk of kidnap, abuse and rape.”
Since Trump’s policy was terminated, “the number of enforcement encounters on the southwest border has skyrocketed,” the judge said in a written statement, as cited by Bloomberg.
The Wall Street Journal reported that “it is not clear whether it is possible to restart the program as it would require the cooperation of the Mexican government.”
Kacsmaryk has given the Biden administration a week to appeal the decision.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had halted the program, known as the Migrant Protections Program (MPP) in June 2021, citing the often-dangerous conditions immigrants faced while waiting in Mexico.
The Department of Homeland Security reported that an estimated 68,000 people were returned to Mexico following their enrollment in MPP, Axios reported.
In a memo to the leaders of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency and Citizenship and Immigration Services, Mayorkas stated that “I have determined that MPP does not adequately or sustainably enhance border management in such a way as to justify the program’s extensive operational burdens and other shortfalls.”
These developments come as the situation at the U.S. – Mexico border remains precarious. The U.S. CBP recorded over 180,000 migrant intercepts in May 2021, the highest recorded in over 20 years, BBC reports. The Biden administration has seen an uptick in the number of minors caught crossing the border, with an estimated 19,000 minors intercepted in March 2021 as opposed to 12,000 in March 2019. In total, the CBP reported that during the 2019 financial year (October 2018 to September 2019) an estimated 800,000 migrants were apprehended at the border. In comparison, the 2021 financial year has already passed the 2019 total, with four months still to go in the financial year. In regard to the situation, Secretary Mayorkas per a statement in March 2021 said that, “This is not new. We have experienced migration surges before – in 2019, 2014, and before then as well.”
