In a Monday ruling, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backed up a federal judge’s decision that upheld Trump’s so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy. That policy requires asylum seekers to stay in that country while waiting for their claim to be processed through the U.S. federal immigration system.
As many as 90% of asylum requests are denied when they eventually make it before a courtroom and an immigration judge, but the backlogged process is notoriously slow and many of the foreign applicants disappear in the country and never show up for the hearing.
The policy is formally known as the “Migrant Protection Protocols.”
Then-presidential candidate Biden denounced the policy and suspended it on his first day in office.
Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, says the 5th Circuit stopped Joe Biden from ending what is a “very effective” policy introduced by Trump.
“That said, it is all going to depend on how earnestly the administration carries out this policy at this point,” he says. “They have it very clear that they are doing this against their will.”
President Biden’s administration had appealed the federal judge’s ruling, which was handed down in August, but the administration has been cooperating and recently sent two foreigners back to Mexico as the policy requires, The Associated Press reported.
According to the AP story, a judge on the appeals court ripped the Biden administration for clumsily attempting to reverse the Trump policy by “typing out a new Word document and posting it on the Internet.”
According to Mehlman, it is true the Biden administration is complying with the policy to appease the courts but there is “absolutely” no enthusiasm, he says, for allowing it to affect immigration.
“And they will do everything in their power to ensure that it is carried out to the very minimum, while it is still in place,” Mehlman predicts, “and while they're working simultaneously to end it entirely."
