‘Remain-in-Mexico' policy gains momentum

In a cramped San Diego courtroom, immigrant mothers cradled restless babies and toddlers as they waited to go before a judge. After a quick exchange, they were whisked back to Mexico where they face months, or possibly years, before their cases play out in the U.S.

Hundreds of miles away, a judge in El Paso, Texas, noticed that an infant was fussing and let the child's mother stand up and burp the baby before shipping her and about a dozen others, including six pregnant women, back to the Mexican border city of Juarez.

“I am afraid to return to Mexico and I'm about to have my baby,” a pregnant woman from Honduras told the judge, her belly pushing out against her red shirt as she blew her runny nose.

Nearby, another Honduran woman waited with her two young children, who began to fidget about an hour into the hearing. The 5-year-old boy hummed to himself while teasing and tickling his 7-year-old sister.

Scenes like these playing out in U.S. border courtrooms in recent weeks would become even more common under a deal that led President Donald Trump to suspend his threat of tariffs on all Mexican exports to the U.S. A centerpiece of the agreement calls for rapid expansion of a policy that makes Central American asylum seekers wait in Mexico while their cases wind through U.S. immigration courts.