WASHINGTON - The Trump administration said on Tuesday it was reinstating the "remain in Mexico" program, resuming an initiative that forced non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for the resolution of their U.S. cases.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that it would restart the program immediately, years after it was ended by former President 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 "remain in Mexico" program in 2021, arguing that migrants were being left in squalid and dangerous conditions on the Mexican side of the border. 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.