A DHS spokesperson confirmed to Fox that enrollments in the program, officially called the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), started on January 19 in the sector, with migrants being returned to Mexico through the Brownsville port of entry. Migrants are being returned from San Diego and El Paso. CBS News first reported the expansion into RGV.
The Remain-in-Mexico policy was set up in 2019 as part of the Trump Administration's efforts to end "catch-and-release," by which migrants were freed into the interior as their asylum claims were examined.
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MPP saw migrants returned to Mexico for their proceedings, and it was hailed by Trump officials as a method to remove a key pull factor for migrants traveling north. Critics called the policy cruel, claiming that it ended in migrants camped out at the border, and put at risk of violence and exploitation by gangs.
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The Biden Administration started revealing the program earlier this year and officially ended it in June. Though a federal court order ordered it to be reinstated after Texas and Missouri sued, arguing that the Administration had not conducted a required analysis of the policy before scrapping it. The Supreme Court upheld that order.
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The DHS spokesperson noted that DHS "has repeatedly sought to terminate MPP."
"DHS currently is, however, under a court order to reimplement MPP in good faith. DHS continues to fight in the courts, including in a pending challenge before the Supreme Court. In the interim, DHS is committed to abiding by the court-mandated reimplementation of MPP in the most humane way possible," the spokesperson announced.
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As part of the expansion, migrants returned via Brownsville will be permitted to reside in Monterrey while their hearings occur. The State Department is working with the Mexican government to secure transportation, shelter, and testing for COVID-19, the spokesperson announced.
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As the legal battle over MPP continues, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a memo at the end of October, stating he had conducted an analysis on whether the program should be kept, modified, or abandoned -- as well as claims that the court announced were not sufficiently handled, like the program's effect on border crossings.
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He said in the memo that he has determined that MPP "should be terminated," even as he accepted that it reduced border crossings
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"In reaching this conclusion, I recognize that MPP likely contributed to reduced migratory flows. But it did so by imposing substantial and unjustifiable human costs on the individuals who were exposed to harm while waiting in Mexico," he stated.
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