Biden’s Bewildering Decision to Expand a Trump-Era Immigration Policy

President Joe Biden says he wants to end the “Remain in Mexico” policy, a Trump-era program that has forced tens of thousands of migrants to await decisions on their immigration cases in Mexico for months.

In a seemingly contradictory move, Biden is first reinstating and expanding it. The program’s return was ordered by the courts. The policy’s expansion, however, was a choice made by the Biden administration.

On Thursday, the US reached an agreement with the Mexican government to revive the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy. Under Trump, the policy allowed 70,000 migrants seeking entry into the US to be sent to Mexican border towns where many lived in squalid encampments or in overcrowded shelters and were targeted by criminal gangs.

“The Biden administration was not ordered by the court to expand Remain in Mexico to new populations,” Ursela Ojeda, senior policy adviser for migrant rights and justice at the Women’s Refugee Commission, said in a press call. “They are going well above and beyond good faith compliance that’s required of them [by the court] to make this policy more cruel and more deadly.”

In addition to Vox, this article appeared in MSN Ireland.

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