"Remain in Mexico" failed: Court wants to overturn Trump's asylum decree

Asylum seekers from South and Central America are no longer sent back to Mexico for the duration of their procedure.

"Remain in Mexico" failed: Court wants to overturn Trump's asylum decree

Asylum seekers from South and Central America are no longer sent back to Mexico for the duration of their procedure. After a court decision, the US Department of Homeland Security wants to overturn a decree by Trump. The court justified its judgment with the waste of resources and personnel.

After a court decision, the US Department of Homeland Security wants to repeal a decree of the previous administration, according to which asylum seekers from South and Central America have to be sent back to the transit country Mexico. The policy under the name "Remain in Mexico", which former US President Donald Trump had decreed, will be ended "quickly and with due process", the ministry said in Washington.

Trump's decree stipulates that asylum seekers from South and Central America who have entered the USA via Mexico will be sent back to Mexico until their asylum process has been resolved. The government of Democratic US President Joe Biden now wants to end this practice. Asylum seekers who were registered under the old regulation should no longer be sent back to Mexico after court hearings as part of their asylum process in the USA.

Shortly before the Department of Homeland Security's announcement, a court lifted an injunction that had prevented a departure from the "Remain in Mexico" policy. The regulations, officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), have numerous "weak points" and draw "resources and personnel away from other more urgent border security efforts," the Department of Homeland Security justified the cancellation that has now been announced.

According to the non-governmental organization Human Rights First, from January 2019 to 2021, a total of 1,544 cases were registered in which asylum seekers returned from the United States to Mexico were victims of murder, rape, torture, kidnapping or other assaults there. This also includes the death of at least one small child.

Immediately after taking office, Biden initiated a series of decrees in a departure from the migration policy of his right-wing nationalist predecessor. He ordered an immediate halt to the construction of the wall on the border with Mexico, founded a working group to reunite separated families at the border and lifted an entry ban for people from predominantly Muslim countries.