US to restart ‘Remain in Mexico’ program

Mexican government has agreed to allow migrants to wait there for hearings

WASHINGTON — The United States will reimplement the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” program as soon as Monday, the Department of Homeland Security said after the Mexican government agreed to allow migrants to stay there as they wait for U.S. immigration court hearings.

The agency said Thursday it would relaunch the program, known formally as the Migration Protection Protocols, or MPP, “on or around” Dec. 6. Once fully operational, the program will be implemented across the southwest border at seven ports of entry: San Diego; Calexico, California.; Nogales, Arizona; and El Paso, Eagle Pass, Laredo and Brownsville in Texas.

Under MPP, migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border and request asylum are returned to Mexico and forced to wait for final decisions in their U.S. immigration cases.

Mexico issued a statement earlier Thursday saying that, given the U.S. commitment to addressing humanitarian concerns about MPP, “it will not return to their countries of origin certain migrants who have an appointment to appear before an immigration judge in the United States to request asylum in that country,” according to a translation of the release.

The announcement came hours after DHS announced changes to MPP to address Mexico’s concerns, and said it was ready to restart the program as soon as the Mexican government “makes a final and independent decision” to accept migrants through the program.

Human rights advocates panned the program while in effect under the Trump administration for putting vulnerable asylum-seekers at further risk and limiting their access to U.S. immigration lawyers.

Mexico had raised similar concerns and requested improvements before the program could be reinstated, the government said in earlier court filings.

The changes announced Thursday include a DHS commitment to ensuring migrants have access to lawyers before and during initial screenings, and at immigration court hearings, and will receive more and better information about the border program. DHS also pledged that individuals will generally have a final decision in their asylum case within six months of being returned to Mexico.

The U.S. government will also work with the Mexican government to ensure migrants can travel safely to their U.S. immigration court hearings, and can access health care, work permits and safe shelters in Mexico.

Migrants will also have access to COVID-19 vaccines, DHS said.

The administration has faced blowback from immigrant advocacy groups and nonprofits, who say that no improvements to the program could cure the program’s inherent flaws. In October, more than 70 legal services providers and law firms wrote to top administration officials arguing there “is no way to make this program safe, humane, or lawful” and that they “refuse to be complicit” in it.

The planned revival of the controversial program is in response to a federal court ruling ordering the Biden administration to take good faith efforts to resume MPP.

The administration halted the program shortly after President Joe Biden took office and terminated it formally in June. After a lawsuit by Texas and Missouri challenged the termination, a Texas federal judge found the administration had not sufficiently explained its reasons for ending the program.

While the administration works to resume the program under that court order, it has also moved to end it again. In October, DHS released a pair of memos again terminating the program, with more reasoning provided.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas concluded in those memos that, while the implementation of MPP “likely contributed to reduced migratory flows,” it did so “by imposing substantial and unjustifiable human costs on the individuals who were exposed to harm while waiting in Mexico.”

However, the new termination memo won’t take effect until it is reviewed and approved by the judge.

Following the DHS announcement Thursday, Eleanor Acer, senior director for refugee protection at Human Rights First, said MPP “was a humanitarian disaster when it was first implemented, and it is doomed to be so again.”

“A laundry list of improvements cannot fix an inherently inhumane, illegal, unjust and unfixable policy,” she said in a statement.