One of President Biden’s major campaign promises was to tackle US immigration at the southern border and to reverse some of the Trump administration’s inhumane border policies. However, a year into the administration little has changed and it doesn’t look like it’s going to anytime soon.
The most significant attempt the Biden administration has made towards policy change at the border was the removal of the Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP) otherwise known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy. MPP is an immigration program initiated in January 2019 under the Trump administration that allows the US to return migrants from the US southern border to Mexico while their court proceedings are being processed.
Under the previous administration MPP proved to be logistically challenging and dangerous for the migrants it affected. With little to no support from either the US or Mexican governments, migrants were left in border cities on the Mexico side without access to sanitation areas, proper shelter or health care unless provided for by local nonprofits or churches. Most migrants in the program came to reside in large tent camps that left them exposed to the elements as well as to local organized crime in border cities like in Reynosa across from McAllen, Texas. These conditions were only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which was spread rampantly throughout the tent camps.
On June 1, 2021 the Biden administration’s Secretary of Homeland Security issued a memorandum to terminate MPP citing humanitarian concerns, however, on August 13, 2021 U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled in Texas v. Biden that the June 1, 2021, memo violated the Administrative Procedure Act and INA and ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to “enforce and implement MPP in good faith.” The Texas District Court acknowledged that while the DHS has the power to remove the policy, it must do so through the correct legal avenues and that the memorandum was an overreach of power. The court’s ruling has placed legal and bureaucratic hurdles for Biden that the administration has proven to be unsuccessful in appealing, with little evidence to indicate otherwise in the near future.
On October 29, 2021 the Secretary of Homeland Security issued another memorandum to terminate MPP as soon as the issuance of a final judicial decision on the Texas injucture, though the process could be drawn out for quite some time. Until then the DHS will continue to implement MPP starting on December 6, 2021 in the seven ports of entry in San Diego, Calexico, Nogales, El Paso, Eagle Pass, Laredo, and Brownsville.
In an attempt to minimize the human cost of MPP and in compliance with the new deal struck with the Mexican government the following key changes are being made to the program: court proceedings are to conclude generally within six months of a migrant’s return to Mexico; over all better communication of processing to migrants in the program at every step of their proceedure; migrants must be asked if they are afraid to return to Mexico and if they state yes then they are given 24 hours to meet with counsel to describe potential threats they are concerned with; DHS will not enroll particularly vulnerable migrants; DHS will provide COVID-19 vaccinations for all migrants in the program.
While it is too soon to see how these changes will affect the implementation of MPP, immigration advocates and border nonprofits do not appear hopeful that the program will be any different the second time around.