US makes another attempt to end the ‘Remain in Mexico’ programme

The Biden administration is still subject to a court decision that has ruled the programme needs to be reinstated. US President Joe Biden’s administration moved – for a second time – to end the Migration Protection Protocols, a policy initiated by his predecessor Donald Trump that forced asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their court hearings. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a memo issued on Friday that the policy, also known as “Remain in Mexico” likely contributed to a decrease in the number of migrants crossing the US-Mexico border in 2019, but it also needlessly exposed people to danger. “The Biden administration should take other urgent steps to ensure that Remain in Mexico is finally ended, rather than restarted, and to also end its use of the other Trump administration policy – referred to as Title 42 – which returns people seeking refugee protection to the very same extreme violence described in this termination memorandum,” Eleanor Acer, Human Rights First’s director of refugee protection told Al Jazeera in an email. “This program should be permanently discarded along with the many other remaining Trump administration policies willfully designed to punish and deter refugees from legally seeking safety in the United States.” Earlier this month, the administration said it was complying in “good faith” with the Texas court order and was taking steps to reinstate the programme by mid-November.