GOP Senator Plans To Introduce Bill To Reinstate Trump’s ‘Remain In Mexico’ Policy
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has announced that she would bring legislation this week to reinstate the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols (also viewed as the “Remain in Mexico” policy), which President Joe Biden suspended on his first day in office.
Blackburn’s law, named the “Make the Migrant Protection Protocols Mandatory Act,” will force asylum seekers who enter the southern border without valid identification or other documents to remain in Mexico once their case is processed in a U.S. court.
“President Biden’s failed immigration policies have created a crisis at our southern border,” Blackburn said in a statement, Fox News reported.
“Over half a million illegal aliens have poured across our southern border since Biden decided to repeal President Trump’s successful policy that forced migrants to remain in Mexico while seeking asylum. My legislation will stop Biden’s decision to catch and release migrants into our communities and reinstate President Trump’s Remain in Mexico program,” Blackburn continued.
Biden used an executive order to eliminate Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), which kept foreigners who claimed asylum after being caught by US Customs and Border Patrol while approaching the US-Mexico border in Mexico and awaiting their court date.
Biden instead resorted back to the “catch-and-release” method, in which undocumented immigrants are permitted to come into the country, granted a court date, and eventually released to family members who reside in the country.
The number of people at the border escalated all of a sudden. In February, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers arrested almost 100,000 immigrants at the border. According to Pew Research Center, just over 16,000 people were apprehended at the border in April.
Alejandro Mayorka, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said in March that the increase in immigration at the southern border is the highest in 20 years.
Mayorkas said in a release that “we are on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years,” despite failing to classify the situation a “crisis.”
Many of the thousands of unaccompanied minors now housed in border shelters, according to Mayorkas, have relatives in the United States.
“In more than 80 percent of cases, the child has a family member in the United States. In more than 40 percent of cases, that family member is a parent or legal guardian. These are children being reunited with their families who will care for them,” Mayorkas said.
According to data reported by Customs and Border Protection, almost 19,000 migrant families were apprehended at the border in February, up from 7,000 in January. The number of unaccompanied minors apprehended crossing the border rose from 5,694 in January to 9,297 in February.
Watch what the Tennessee said to Fox News below!
