President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is vowing an end to the “Remain in Mexico” program despite its success in cutting asylum fraud.
First implemented in 2019 by former President Trump, the Remain in Mexico program allows DHS to quickly return border crossers to Mexico while they await their asylum and immigration hearings in the United States — effectively eliminating the practice commonly known as “Catch and Release.”
On Thursday, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruled that Biden’s DHS can end Remain in Mexico but kicked the case back to a lower court to decide whether the administration properly ended the program in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
Biden’s DHS released a statement following the ruling, vowing to continue their effort to end Remain in Mexico:
As Secretary Mayorkas concluded in October 2021 after a thorough review, the prior Administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) has endemic flaws, imposes unjustifiable human costs, and pulls resources and personnel away from other priority efforts to secure our border. We welcome the Supreme Court’s decision affirming that the Secretary has the discretionary authority to terminate the program, and we will continue our efforts to terminate the program as soon as legally permissible. [Emphasis added]
The Biden administration’s seeking to end Remain in Mexico comes even as the program has drastically helped eliminate asylum fraud where border crossers and illegal aliens, who knowingly did not qualify for asylum, were released into the U.S. interior regardless.
The latest federal data, as Breitbart News reported, reveals that of the more than 45,000 Remain in Mexico cases adjudicated, only 1.6 percent of migrants enrolled in the program have been found to have legitimate asylum claims.
Meanwhile, more than 70 percent of migrants enrolled in the program have been ordered deported after failing to prove that they have valid claims for asylum. More than 10,000 migrants terminated their asylum proceedings before making it to court, suggesting they too did not believe they would be found to have valid asylum claims.
Reformers said the SCOTUS ruling underscores why House and Senate Republicans must make codifying Remain in Mexico into federal statute a key part of their immigration agenda for this year’s midterm elections and in 2024.
“Courts cannot be relied on to reign in the Biden administration’s relentless flouting of immigration laws,” executives with the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) said in a statement. “Congress must step forward with needed reforms to stop this historic border crisis.”
Biden’s DHS has replaced Remain in Mexico with an expansive Catch and Release operation where more than a million border crossers and illegal aliens have been released into American communities since the president took office in late January 2021.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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