After losing a legal battle, the Biden administration tentatively plans a mid-November restart of a Trump era policy that forces migrants seeking asylum to wait in Mexico for their U.S. immigration court hearings, according to a court filing late Thursday.
When he took over office, Biden had ended the Trump administration's Remain in Mexico policy, saying it was inhumane because of the violence migrants faced waiting to sit in Mexico for their court hearings when he was inaugurated.
Texas and Missouri sued Biden administration in April over the suspension of Remain in Mexico, which is also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols or MPP. In August, a federal judge in Texas ordered the Biden administration to reinstate the policy pending the outcome of the suit.
The Biden administration fought the order, but failed in supreme court and in federal courts and said it would comply with the court's order.
Senior administration officials told reporters Thursday that under the updated version of Remain in Mexico, immigrants will get court dates no more than six months in the future and will attend hearings with immigration judges in one of 10 courts near Brownsville & Laredo, Texas.
The plans for the revised policy, however, would be put on hold if the Biden administration wins the lawsuit filed by Texas and Missouri.
Mexico will also have the power to modify the policy, the officials said, and the administration has been consulting with it about details.
There are certain issues Mexico has also raised about the prior implementation of Remain in Mexico, one of the officials said. Any reimplementation would have to take those into account. In a statement, a spokesperson for the department of Homeland Security said that as noted in the declaration filed on Thursday, DHS is taking necessary steps to comply with the court order, which requires us to reimplement MPP in good faith. We are working to do so despite our appeal of the court's order, including, for example, by issuing contracts to rebuild temporary immigration hearing facilities near the Southwest border.
Significantly, Mexico is a sovereign nation that must make an independent decision to accept the return of individuals without status in Mexico as part of any reimplementation of MPP, the statement said. Discussions with the government of Mexico regarding when and how MPP will be rearranged are ongoing. Remain in Mexico, which the Trump administration launched in January 2019 created a population boom in migrant camps on the Mexican side of the border. Human rights organizations documented hundreds of kidnappings, rapes and assaults of migrants who were waiting in the sprawling camps for their asylum hearings.
The Biden administration has continued to propose and enforce — and defend in another court case - Covid 19 restrictions known as Title 42, which push immigrants back into Mexico or deport them to their home countries without giving them court dates. The officials said that the administration will continue to use this policy and that only immigrants who are not subject to Title 42 — for a variety of reasons — would be subjected to stay in Mexico.