The judge ordered a pause on the dismantling of the program implemented by Donald Trump in 2019, while the litigation around it continues. The Biden Administration had already announced the progressive end of this policy, which has expelled thousands of migrants to Mexico to await a decision on their asylum cases there.
A federal judge in Texas ruled this Thursday that the Joe Biden Administration cannot yet end the ‘Stay in Mexico’ program, the policy adopted by Donald Trump in 2019 that has expelled thousands of migrants to that country to await the resolution of their asylum cases.
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled that the program, which Biden has tried to dismantle since 2021, must remain in place while litigation over its future continues.
Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court ruled that the Biden Administration had the authority to strike down the program, rejecting legal challenges from several red states. However, the highest court sent the case back to Judge Kacsmaryk for further analysis.
That analysis resides in whether the Biden Administration complied with the law in determining the end of the program in an October 2021 memo.
In August 2022, after the Supreme Court decision, the Department of Homeland Security promised to put an end “in a quick and orderly manner” to this program, whose official name is Migrant Protection Protocols.
This would mean that new asylum seekers would no longer be registered and that those already registered would be “disenrolled” to continue their process within the United States.
‘Stay in Mexico’ has affected more than 75,000 immigrants, according to the International Rescue Committee. Human rights organizations have denounced since its establishment that it puts migrants in danger of being victims of organized crime on the Mexican side, where many have had to live in street tents.
“The lack of legal advice, combined with the danger and insecurity that people face in border cities, made it almost impossible for someone subject to MPP to win their asylum case,” the American Immigration Council reported in January 2022.
The ‘Stay in Mexico’ program is a separate policy from Title 42, the health regulation that is expected to end on December 21 and that has served since 2020 to expel more than two million migrants from the United States, under the pretext of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The latest legal decisions on immigration come at a time when the southern border, especially the El Paso (Texas) area, faces one of the largest waves of asylum seekers in recent years, testing the reception and processing system of migrants.