Aug 16,2021: A federal judge in Texas has ordered the Biden administration to reinstate the Remain in Mexico program, a Trump-era immigration policy that required migrants seeking asylum to wait in Mexican border cities for the duration of their immigration cases.
The program, which the Department of Homeland Security under former President Donald Trump introduced in 2019 at the height of a surge in Central American families coming to the U.S. border, was wound down by President Biden soon after he took office.
In a ruling late Friday, U.S. Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas said the elimination of the policy was arbitrary and violated federal law because the administration didn’t properly consider the benefits of the program. He also wrote that ending it has contributed to the current border surge.
“Since [its] termination, the number of enforcement encounters on the southwest border has skyrocketed,” he wrote.