News / Politics

Judge orders Biden to reinstate Trump's 'remain in Mexico' policy

Sunday, 15 August 2021 7:26 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 15 August 2021 9:30 AM ]

Asylum seekers wait on the Mexican side of the Brownsville-Matamoros International Bridge after being denied entry by US Customs and Border Protection officers near Brownsville, Texas, US, July 25, 2018. (Reuters photo)

A US federal judge has ordered the administration of President Joe Biden to reinstate a Trump-era immigration policy which forced tens of thousands of Central American asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for US court cases.

During his first days in office, Biden halted the controversial Migrant Protection Protocols border policy, known as "Remain in Mexico," adopted by former president Donald Trump.

US court sides with Trump on deporting immigrants

A US court of appeals on Monday gave the green light for the Trump administration to expel hundreds of thousands of nationals from four countries who had been granted protected status for humanitarian reasons.

In April, the states of Texas and Missouri sued the Biden administration, saying reversing the policy resulted in a surge of migrants at the US-Mexico border that inflicted costs on the states.

In a June memo, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas formally ended the program, arguing keeping it intact "would be a poor use of the department’s resources.”

However, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, blocked the administration from implementing that memo, although he stayed his order for seven days "to allow the federal government time to seek emergency relief at the appellate level."

Kacsmaryk said Friday the administration “failed to consider several critical factors” when ending the program.

"Today, in a huge win for the Missouri Attorney General’s Office and in a big step towards securing the border, a federal court issued a nationwide permanent injunction, reversing the Biden Administration’s suspension of the program and ordering the Biden Administration to reimplement the program,” Missouri state Attorney General Schmitt said in a statement.

Under the policy, which was put into effect in 2019 by a memo from then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, an estimated 68,000 migrants were returned to Mexico.

For those who were subject to it, it meant waiting months, if not years, in squalid conditions and under the threat of sexual assault, extortion and kidnapping.

The new court ruling comes as Biden has maintained an order known as Title 42, which allows US authorities to expel migrants caught crossing the southern border back to Mexico.

Immigrant advocates have accused the Biden administration of doing the exact opposite of what the president had promised on the campaign trail.