DHS officials said asylum seekers waiting in Mexico for their U.S. immigration court hearing would be permitted to cross the border on the day of their case and stay in the United States pending a decision. This process can often take a long time.
The DHS statement said that the program, formally known as the “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP) and enacted during the Trump administration, has “endemic flaws, imposes unjustifiable human costs, and pulls resources and personnel away from other priority efforts to secure our border.”
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The announcement was made possible by a court order on Monday issued by U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who set aside a ruling he had issued last year that required the Biden administration to reimpose MPP, which had been suspended by President Joe Biden's first day in office in January 2021, CBS News reported.
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Justice Department lawyers had asked Kacsmaryk to void his August 2021 ruling, citing the Supreme Court decision on June 30 to reject the legal arguments by Texas and Missouri Republican officials that Kacsmaryk upheld in his order last year.
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The Supreme Court ruling did not become lawfully binding until Aug. 1, and there was another legal process to take care of before the Biden administration could request Kacsmaryk to repeal his order, according to CBS News.
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Although the suppression of MPP is a legal victory for asylum-seeker champions, who have called the policy inhumane and draconian, it will have a limited impact, CBS News pointed out, since the Biden administration had been placing a very small percentage of migrants in the program.
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Only 5,764 migrants have been returned to Mexico under the policy since MPP was reinstated in December 2021, while during the same period, U.S. border officials have reported record levels of unlawful migration, processing migrants over 1.4 million times.
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The Trump administration started the MPP policy in early 2019 to return 70,000 migrants to Mexico, many of whom lived in dirty accommodations beside the U.S. border. Human rights workers recorded hundreds of reported attacks against migrants forced to wait in Mexico, including in areas U.S. officials warn Americans not to visit because of violent crime and kidnappings.
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The Trump administration said MPP dissuaded migrants looking for better economic opportunities from using the asylum system to stay and work in the U.S. But Mr. Biden denounced the policy as inhumane on the 2020 campaign trail and on his first day in office, DHS stopped placing migrants in the program.
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