Texas, Missouri sue Biden administration over cancellation of Trump's 'wait-in-Mexico' policy
The red states claim if the policy is not revived, they will be burdened with higher costs of fighting human trafficking.
Central American migrants wait in Tijuana, Mexico, in September 2019 to see if their number will be called to cross the border and apply for asylum in the United States. (Photo: Emilio Espejel/AP)
Texas and Missouri asked a federal judge Tuesday to order the Biden administration to reinstate a Trump-era policy that forced immigrants to wait in Mexico for adjudication of their asylum cases.
In a lawsuit filed in Amarillo federal court, the Republican-led states claim they will be forced to expend more resources fighting human trafficking if the Migrant Protection Protocols, commonly called the “Remain in Mexico” program, is not revived.
Hours after President Joe Biden took office on Jan. 20, the Department of Homeland Security’s top brass issued a memo suspending new enrollments into MPP. In early February, the new administration started letting small groups of the 25,000 MPP enrollees who still have pending asylum cases enter the U.S. to wait for resolution of their cases.
With the U.S. Supreme Court set to hear a challenge of MPP on March 1, held over from former President Donald Trump’s tenure in the White House, the Biden administration had the court cancel arguments.
Texas’ Republican leaders claim Biden’s suspension of the program is a major reason why record numbers of immigrants are entering the country.
The Border Patrol said last week it had apprehended 168,195 immigrants on the border in March, including 96,628 single adults and 52,904 family units and 19,000 children traveling, its busiest month for arrests since March 2001.
“By dismantling the MPP, the administration has directly caused a massive uptick in illegal immigration through Central America, Mexico and to the U.S. southern border,” Texas and Missouri claim in the filing.
Texas Attorney General Paxton has his arguments over how illegal immigration hurts the state’s bottom line down pat. He’s cited such statistics in a lawsuit seeking to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program instituted by former President Barack Obama that allows some immigrants to qualify for deferral of deportation and work permits, and others filed in recent weeks over Biden’s attempt to implement a 100-day pause on most deportations and his treatment of immigrants incarcerated on felony convictions.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, joined by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, sued the Biden administration Tuesday over the termination of the MPP program requiring illegal immigrants to remain in Mexcio while their asylum claim was processed. (Photo: Darren Baxter/Austin Statemen)
Paxton’s challenge of MPP is no different.
“The influx of unlawful immigrants with meritless claims of asylum will result in additional unlawful migrants entering and remaining in Texas and Missouri, thus forcing both states to expend more taxpayer resources on health care, education, social services and similar services for such migrants,” the complaint states.
Critics have questioned why Missouri joined the lawsuit, given it is hundreds of miles from the border. The Show Me State says in the complaint it is a destination for human traffickers, including those trafficking Central American immigrants.
“Indeed, St. Louis and Kansas City are major human-trafficking hubs connected by Interstate 70,” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt wrote in the lawsuit. “As a direct result of the suspension of new enrollments into the MPP, and the corresponding increase in human-trafficking incidents involving vulnerable Central American migrants, both Texas and Missouri will be forced to spend significantly more resources in combating human trafficking,.”
The two states claim Biden’s decision to suspend MPP was unconstitutional and an “arbitrary and capricious” agency action that violates the Administrative Procedure Act. They seek a declaration that the memo suspending the program is unlawful and an injunction ordering Homeland Security officials to reinstate the policy.
Trump touted MPP as a way to end what he called the “catch and release” of immigrants coming to the U.S., making meritless asylum claims, then being released in the U.S. to await their court hearings, sometimes for years due to a massive backlog of asylum cases.
The Department of Homeland Security launched the program in January 2019 at the San Ysidro, California, port of entry bordering Tijuana, Mexico, and later implemented it at other sites across the Southwest border. The former president portrayed MPP as a resounding success in reducing the number of people, mainly Central Americans, seeking asylum in the United States, as more than 71,000 immigrants were enrolled it.
Federal courts did not allow the Trump administration to place immigrant children who entered the U.S. without their parents in the program. The Department of Homeland Security said they would decide on a case-by-case basis who to enroll in MPP and would exempt vulnerable people, in particular pregnant women.
The I-70 Corridor from Kansas City to St. Louis provides a pipeline through Missouri for drug dealers, human traffickers and other criminals from Central America to transport their “products” for distribution throughout the U.S. (Photo: Courtesy of MoDOT)
But in announcing a legal challenge of the program in October 2019, the ACLU of Texas said it had interviewed 18 pregnant women who they claimed had been forced into MPP, including an 18-year-old from Ecuador who claimed she was kidnapped in the border city of Matamoros, Mexico and told she would be killed unless her family paid a ransom.
Many of those turned back and forced to wait in Mexico took shelter in makeshift tent camps near the border where immigrant advocates say they became targets of extortion, kidnapping, robberies and assaults by drug cartels and even Mexican law enforcement.
Despite Texas’ and Missouri’s claims that Biden’s reversal of some of Trump’s hardline-immigration policies is drawing Central Americans to the United States, immigrant advocates don’t see it that way.
Dylan Corbett, director of the Hope Border Institute in El Paso, said Biden has continued a pandemic-related policy known as Title 42 that Trump instituted last April, under which most immigrants, including asylum seekers, are immediately expelled from the United States.
“At least with Remain in Mexico you had a court date. But with Title 42 you are expelled and you have no access to the asylum system,” Corbett said in a phone interview.
He said the Biden administration has indicated it is going to continue Title 42 as long as it can, with the exception Biden, unlike Trump, is not subjecting children crossing the border without parents to it. Biden’s policy is to move those children to shelters and making an effort to place them with family in the U.S.
“Title 42 has affected more people than were ever affected by Remain in Mexico. Remain in Mexico, it was just 65,000 people,” Corbett said. “But Title 42 we’ve exceeded that amount of people, even just this year since January, since the beginning of the Biden administration, more people have been returned under Title 42 than were returned under Remain in Mexico.”
Corbett would argue that there is no open invitation to the Central American immigrants to rush to the U.S.-Mexico border given that, as he claims, more people were returned under Trump administration rules.
That is patently false.
While Corbett and other activists like him are only counting official CBP numbers that have crossed the border, the huge uptick in unaccompanied minors is also creating an unofficial illegal immigration fed by the cartels. CBP becomes involved in dealing with groups of anywhere from 10 to 200 unaccompanied minors as the Mexican cartels are earining billions of dollars by sneaking drugs, human traffic and other illegal “products” across the border, in most cases just a short distance away.
The crisis at the border is not being addressed by the Biden administration. At this writing, Vice-President Kamala Harris was finally heard from, announcing visits to Guatamala and Honduras to address the immigrant issue. Biden has proposed giving money to those countries in an effort to stem the tide of illegal immigration, an idea met with round derision from both sides of the aisle.
The simple response is for the Biden cabal in the White House to accede to the demands of Texas and Missouri in their joint lawsuit.
Don’t hold your breath.