Photo screengrab via President Joe Biden Twitter
Rebecca Morin, Rafael Carranza | USA TODAY
The United States will begin allowing in migrants who sought asylum under the Trump administration but were forced to sit in Mexico as they awaited a hearing before a judge, the Biden administration announced Friday.
It was the latest step by President Joe Biden to roll back some of former President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies. But the announcement comes days after the White House said authorities will be turning away a vast majority of migrants seeking asylum at the border.
“As President Biden has made clear, the U.S. government is committed to rebuilding a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.
“We applaud the Biden administrations decision to begin the process of unwinding the harmful and dangerous MPP program from the prior administration. Under this program, foreign nationals seeking asylum were forced to remain in Mexico awaiting their court date rather than be paroled into the United States.’
“Now, if they are determined to have a credible fear of return to their home country based on a protected ground of asylum law, they will be processed through a port of entry and allowed to remain in the US to litigate their case before an immigration judge. This is not a blanket amnesty, rather a humane and reasonable approach to dealing with a larger humanitarian crisis.”
Darius Amiri, Rose Law Group Immigration Dept. Chair
