IT'S WORKING: TRUMP ADMIN'S 'REMAIN IN MEXICO' POLICY DRASTICALLY CURBING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
Jon Dougherty
(NationalSentinel) Don’t look now, but months after the Trump administration adopted its “Remain in Mexico” policy, illegal immigration figures have fallen substantially, according to new data.
The Washington Free Beacon reportsthat thousands of would-be illegal immigrants are being sent back to Mexico to await asylum hearings as part of the administration’s immigration policies, leading to curbs in the recent waves of migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The news site notes further:
The Migrant Protection Protocols—more colloquially known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy—are regulations issued by former secretary of homeland security Kirstjen Nielsen in December 2018.
Under the MPP, a subset of individuals who claim to be seeking asylum after being apprehended at the border now must await the results of their immigration court hearings in Mexico, rather than being detained—or, more often, released on their own recognizance—in the United States.
Asylum seekers, especially from non-contiguous countries, pose a unique challenge to the immigration system. Preexisting laws and regulations mean that asylum seekers can only be detained for so long before being released, while the large immigration court backlog essentially guarantees that these time thresholds will be passed
The result is a system of de facto catch-and-release, in which an individual can simply claim asylum at the border and then disappear into the interior while his or her case is processed.
When the “Remain in Mexico” policy was adopted, the White House said the stated objective was to cut the then-crisis levels of migrants crushing the southwest border, due in no small part to the asylum loophole that Congress — mostly Democrats — refuses to address. (Related: Blatant LIES: ‘Mainstream’ media blames Kirstjen Nielsen for enforcing ‘child separation’ policy ordered by liberal court DECADES ago)
Anyone seeking asylum in the U.S. had to wait in Mexico for their asylum case to be heard, meaning they could not simply disappear into the interior of the United States, never to be seen again. Some 90 percent of asylum applications are denied because they don’t meet legal standards.
According to new data released Monday by the nonpartisan Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), the ‘remain’ policy is working as intended: Almost 12,000 people were sent back to Mexico in July compared to about 5,000 in May and only 15 at the beginning of this year, the Free Beacon reported.
As the chart shows, the results have been staggeringly positive:
The TRAC data also supports claims by the Department of Homeland Security that there has been a substantial decline in monthly apprehensions of illegal aliens in June and July, which is in part due to the implementation of MPP.
It’s important to note that the policy doesn’t entail stopping migrants at the border and then returning them to Mexico while they await asylum. Rather, it appears as though the policy is serving to deter illegal border crossing in the first place, which is part of the strategy.
Democrats and Left-wing immigration groups continue to block the Trump administration at every possible juncture, however.
In recent days, Democrat attorneys general from about 20 states suedto block the administration’s attempts to revise the Flores Decision, a federal court ruling that says the government may only detain illegal alien children for 20 days while attempting to process their asylum claims.