DHS Says Brazilian Migrants Are Being Sent Back to Mexico

Mexico and the U.S. border agencies have begun adding Brazilian migrants to the cross-border program that keeps asylum seekers out of the U.S. — and from obtaining U.S. jobs — before their court hearings.

“The Department of Homeland Security began processing Brazilian migrants for return to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP),” according to a  January 29 press release. The release said:

The number of Brazilian nationals arriving at the Southwest border has tripled in just the last year …

First implemented in January 2019, pursuant to a law passed by Congress in 1996 on a bipartisan basis, the MPP program allows certain aliens to remain in Mexico while awaiting [asylum] court proceedings in the United States. This law does not limit the program to any one nationality or language. The fact that Brazilians are now part of the program shows that the Department, along with its Mexican counterparts, have always sought to expand the program in a safe and responsible manner. MPP has been a crucial element of the Department’s success in addressing the ongoing crisis, securing the border, and ending catch and release.

The program works because migrants sent back to Mexico cannot get the U.S. jobs they need to pay their coyotes (human traffickers) and cannot hide in cities to evade deportation. More than 55,000 asylum seekers have been sent back to Mexico before their court hearings, helping to slash the arrival of migrants down to 30,000 in December 2019.

In 2018, 1,634 Brazilians were detained at the borders, according to DHS data. The January 29 statement suggests that almost 5,000 Brazilians were detained in 2019.

“Colleagues in Juarez are reporting that several Brazilians were returned today for the first time,” Taylor Levy, an immigration lawyer in El Paso, tweeted January 29. “Their vulnerability to kidnapping is greater bc of their lack of Spanish skills. I know zero Portuguese-speaking attorneys in [the] area.”

So far, U.S. agencies do not have approval from Mexico to send migrants from Africa, India, and Asian back into Mexico before their U.S. asylum hearings.

The MPP program is strongly opposed by pro-migration advocates, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who is competing for the Democrats’ presidential 2020 nomination.

The flow of migrants across the border since 2017 has added at least one million workers, consumers, and renters. That is good news for employers, retailers, landlords, and immigration lawyers. But that is bad news for blue-collar Americans because the migration nudges their wages downwards and their rents upwards.