Mexico rejects the US restarting the “Remain in Mexico” plan

Mexico rejected on Monday that the United States reinstate the return program for asylum seekers known as “Remain in Mexico”, a measure imposed by the government of President Donald Trump that the current government of Joe Biden abolished but was forced to reactivate in a occasion by court order.

In a statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicated that the US authorities notified it of their intention to restart the return of non-Mexican people so that they wait in Mexico while their asylum application is examined in the United States.

The Biden government has not made such intentions public and ended that program, but Republican politicians sued in court for its reinstatement. The case reached the US Supreme Court, which authorized the Democratic president to end the measure, but returned the issue to local courts for certain administrative issues.

According to the Mexican statement, on December 15, 2022, the Northern District Court of Texas issued a ruling that again forced Biden to reactivate the “Remain in Mexico” policy. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Biden government has said it opposes this program, which has been criticized by UN agencies and human rights organizations, as it returns asylum seekers to places of high activity for organized crime and in the that many of them have been victims of all kinds of crimes in recent years.

During the Trump administration, more than 70,000 asylum seekers were returned to Mexico to await the development of their petition in the United States. When Biden was forced to reinstate the program, some 7,600 people were returned from December 2021 to October last year, according to Mexican government data.

That second version of the measure attempted to take a more humanitarian approach and affected a very small percentage of the tens of thousands of migrants who are returned to Mexico each month under a public health rule known as Title 42, which was imposed by Trump. at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to prevent the spread of contagion, and which Biden has maintained and expanded.

However, the current US government also recently increased the number of temporary visas it grants for certain nationalities due to the unprecedented migratory flow registered in the last year on the southern border of the country.