Confusion, relief as ‘Remain in Mexico’ begins to wind down

SAN DIEGO » Moments after his immigration case was heard Wednesday, a 51-year-old Cuban asylum seeker sat on a bench in the back of the courtroom and wept openly.

He had just learned that he would be allowed to fight his case from inside the United States instead of returning again to Tijuana under the “Remain in Mexico” program.

He’d been waiting more than two months in Tijuana for his immigration court case under the program, known officially as Migrant Protection Protocols or MPP.

“In this moment, I am free,” he told the Union-tribune in Spanish a few minutes after he was officially released from custody. “Before, I was not free.”

The man was among the first migrants released from MPP this past week with the Biden administration’s announcement that the program was ending, following a lengthy legal battle in federal court. However, days later, most of those enrolled in the program are still waiting to be let into the United States.

The long-anticipated and yet abrupt end to the program meant confusion on the first days — not only for the migrants themselves but also for those who work in the program, including immigration judges, private and government attorneys, and even the contracted guards who keep MPP enrollees in custody while they’re in U.S. immigration court.

This marks the Biden administration’s second attempt to end the Trumpcreated policy. Following a campaign promise, President Joe Biden early on in his term terminated the program. Then after a lawsuit in Texas, his administration was ordered to reimplement it. This second wind down comes after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered in June that the administration could end Remain in Mexico.

But the administration didn’t act on the Supreme Court ruling until Monday, when the district court that had initially ordered the program’s reimplementation officially vacated its decision. The Department of Homeland Security announced hours later that people would be unenrolled when they came onto U.S. soil for their next court hearings.

This process is different from the previous wind down, which involved coordination among international agencies and local nonprofits to bring dozens of asylum seekers into the U.S. each morning.

So far one to three people per day have been taken out of the program in San Diego for a total of eight since Tuesday. At that pace, the wind down could take months to bring in the hundreds waiting in Tijuana.

In contrast, when the Biden administration initially ended the program in 2021, 25 people were brought into the United States at the San Diego-tijuana border just on the first day, according to Jewish Family Service, a local nonprofit that assisted in welcoming the asylum seekers onto U.S. soil.

DHS did not respond to questions about the speed of the current process.

Immigration officials responded to the arrival of Ukrainian asylum seekers at the border in the spring at a far faster rate.

In April, border officials in San Diego were able to receive more than 300 Ukrainian asylum seekers per day at the San Ysidro Port of Entry. If DHS chose to move at a similar pace for the MPP wind down, all of those waiting in Tijuana for their next hearings could be inside the United States within a couple of days.

With little clarity about what the disenrollment process would look like, Monday’s announcement left many in Tijuana anxious about whether they might end up in U.S. immigration detention. Recently, that started happening to many people who were initially enrolled in the program but later passed screening interviews that found they were in danger in Mexico and should not be returned.

That question remained after the first day of postmpp hearings.

On Tuesday, Michael Sullivan, an attorney representing the U.S. government, told Immigration Judge Catherine Hallidayroberts that the two men before her would be disenrolled in the program and not returned to Tijuana. But he did not know whether they would be detained in long-term custody or released to their families.

An official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which makes immigration custody determinations, later confirmed that the two men were ultimately taken back to the port of entry and then released with alternatives-todetention devices to monitor their locations within the U.S.

Since then, all of the other MPP enrollees who have crossed the border this past week have ended up at the San Diego Rapid Response Network Migrant Shelter, where they were tested for COVID-19 before getting help traveling to their final destinations around the country.

Knowing that people so far are being released exacerbates the frustration felt by former MPP enrollees who were able to get out of the program before its end, only to be detained by ICE.

Kirsten Zittlau, a San Diego attorney who has taken many MPP cases, said she’s getting calls from her detained clients who used to be in MPP asking how the end of the program affects them. It doesn’t, she tells them.

“It’s just a really raw deal for them,” she said. “It was just a matter of timing whether they were detained or let in. It’s just ridiculous.”

When asked about their situations, an ICE official said that the agency makes custody determinations on a case-by-case basis.

But for people such as the man from Cuba who are now finding themselves able to reunite with family already in the United States — in his case a U.S. citizen brother in Florida — the moment is life-changing.

The man is not being identified because of concerns about the safety of family still in his home country.