(The Center Square) – Border-focused Republicans are eagerly awaiting the next Trump administration, and with it, the return of Remain in Mexico, an immigration policy that makes migrants who illegally cross the border to claim asylum wait in Mexico for their court date, rather than being released into the U.S. under parole.
During a U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing, witnesses confirmed to lawmakers that the president has the statutory power to reimplement the 2019 program, also known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), but added that Congress must do its part.
“Congress must provide the president the resources he needs to accomplish that task,” Andrew R. Arthur from the Center for Immigration Studies testified. “But the current and incoming presidents, like their immediate predecessors, already have ample statutory authorities in the INA to secure the border. How and whether the president chooses to use those authorities, however, is up to him.”
Remain in Mexico in particular is a crucial tool to combat the immigration crisis, he added, because successfully deterring illegal immigration starts before migrants physically reach the border. If potential migrants know the president is serious about securing the border, many of them will decide the risks and costs of travel are not worth the slim chances of success.
Under the Biden administration, which scrapped Remain in Mexico and many other border security policies, more than 12 million migrants have illegally tried to cross the border. In fiscal year 2024 alone, nearly 3 million migrants crossed or attempted to cross the border.
But Adam Isacson, director for Defense Oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, testified against MPP, claiming it had “proved to be only a modest deterrent” as fewer than 68,000 migrants were returned to Mexico to await their asylum hearings when the program was in full swing.
Additionally, he said, the policy had enriched Mexican cartels who exploited migrants waiting in northern Mexico.
“By requiring non-Mexicans to linger for months or even years in border cities, Remain in Mexico created a rich new income stream for cartels,” Isacson said. “[T]hose made to Remain in Mexico were very motivated to pay extortions or ransoms because they could not miss their court dates. If migrants despaired of the MPP process, migrant smugglers – ‘coyotes’ – were waiting to take them across the border for a hefty fee.”
Arthur disagreed with Isacson’s assertion that Remain in Mexico failed to work. Taking the 68,000 number without factoring in other statistics presents a misleading picture of the program’s efficacy, he said.
According to CBP data, agents encountered roughly 144,000 migrants attempting to cross the Southwest border in May 2019. By September of that year, after MPP had been operating for months and news of it had spread, encounters dropped to roughly 52,000 monthly. And in February 2020, CBP encountered fewer than 37,000 migrants.
So the relatively low number of migrants sent to Mexico resulted from CBP encountering fewer migrants due to the MPP deterring people from traveling to cross the border in the first place, Arthur said.
Kenneth Cuccinelli, former acting Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from 2019 to 2021, added that the claim MPP enriched cartels is also false, because the drop in people who attempted to make the journey subsequently led to the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars for the cartels who transport migrants to the border.
“The idea that the cartels benefitted from the Remain in Mexico program is relatively ludicrous compared to the alternative,” Cuccinelli said. “And the alternative we’ve lived with the last four years has been the greatest enriching of the most evil and vicious people in the Western Hemisphere.”
Remain in Mexico could further depress migrant numbers by incentivizing Mexico to do its part and protect its own borders, Cuccinelli said. If thousands of migrants seeking asylum will remain in Mexico for long stretches of time – migrants coming from multiple unstable countries – Mexico will likely ban migrants from using its country as a route to the U.S.
“The real success of programs like the Remain in Mexico program is not just that they screen out fake asylum seekers, but that they help deter illegal aliens from coming in the first place,” Cuccinelli said. “The goal of true border security is to be so effective at keeping attempted illegal entrants out, that they never try to come in the first place.”
