(Reuters) — Several thousand migrants forced to wait in Mexico under a Trump-era program will gradually be able to enter the United States to file their asylum claims in the coming weeks and months, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said on Monday. English) from the United States.
The move comes after the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Joe Biden administration’s attempt to end the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program, which pushed non-Mexican immigrants into return to Mexico to wait for the resolution of their cases in the US, which sometimes took months or years.
The Biden administration will no longer enroll migrants in MPP and those currently waiting in Mexico will be removed from the program and allowed to enter the United States when they return for their next scheduled court dates, the DHS said in a statement.
The program, known informally as “Remain in Mexico,” was launched in 2019 under President Donald Trump. Under Trump, the initiative forced more than 65,000 non-Mexican asylum seekers across the border where they waited in squalid and often dangerous conditions.
Biden ended MPP shortly after taking office in January 2021 as part of his efforts to reverse his predecessor’s hard-line policies. But the termination was blocked by a federal judge in August 2021, forcing Biden to restart the show and ultimately taking the legal fight to the Supreme Court.
As of July 6, nearly 5,800 migrants had been sent to Mexico under a revamped version of the program, according to DHS statistics.
The Biden administration was separately prevented in court from ending another Trump-era order known as Title 42 that allows border authorities to expel migrants without giving them a chance to apply for asylum to limit the spread of covid-19. .