US steps up effort to return asylum seekers to Mexico

WASHINGTON/SAN DIEGO —

The Trump administration is intensifying measures to curb the flow of Central American asylum seekers crossing into the United States from Mexico, officials said on Monday, including sending more people back to Mexico to wait for their asylum claims to be heard by US courts.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency will speed up the reassignment of 750 officers to parts of the border dealing with the largest numbers of immigrants, a shift the administration first announced last week.

Ms. Nielsen was cutting short a visit to Europe and flying back to Washington from London to personally oversee enforcement actions, and would visit the border later in the week, a Homeland Security official said late on Monday.

She had been due to also travel to Sweden and take part in a meeting of G7 security officials in Paris.

US President Donald Trump threatened to close the border this week if Mexico does not stop a surge of people, often traveling as families from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Closing the border could disrupt millions of legal border crossings and billions of dollars in trade. His aides doubled down on the threat on Sunday but offered no specific details or timeline.

One policy put in place earlier this year to return asylum seekers to Mexico, called the Migrant Protection Protocols, will be “immediately” expanded by “hundreds of additional migrants per day above current rates,” Nielsen said in a statement on Monday.

As of March 26, approximately 370 migrants had been returned to Mexico since the program began in late January, a Mexican official said last week.

People who have been returned to Mexico to wait are struggling to find attorneys and receive notice of their proceedings in US courts, rights advocates said. —