Trump revives ‘remain in Mexico’ policy as part of anti-immigration crackdown
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Critics say program that forces asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while cases are processed exposes migrants to harm. The Trump administration has announced the reinstatement of the “remain in Mexico” program, resuming an initiative that forced non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait south of the border while their cases were processed.
The US Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on Tuesday that it would restart the program immediately, years after it was ended by Joe Biden. Donald Trump reclaimed the presidency on Monday vowing to move ahead with aggressive border security measures, including the reinstatement of remain in Mexico, formerly known as the Migrant Protection Protocols. Trump launched the program in 2019 during his first term in office.
Trump officials said it would deter what they called fraudulent asylum claims, while advocates said it put vulnerable migrants, including families with young kids, in danger. Biden ended the program in 2021, arguing that migrants were being left in squalid and dangerous conditions on the Mexican side of the border.
Activists said that exposed highly vulnerable migrants, mostly from Central and South America, to physical harm and illness in unfamiliar and dangerous surroundings with some of the highest murder rates on Earth. The Trump administration on Tuesday said legal wrangling over Biden’s termination of the program left open the opportunity for a quick restart.
When asked earlier in the day about the possibility of a remain in Mexico restart, Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum said her government would attend to the needs of migrants in a humanitarian way, even as she also pledged to repatriate foreign migrants to their home nations.
