Senate Holds Hearing on 'Remain in Mexico', Maligned Policy Could Become Law
The Migrant Protection Protocols created major barriers to asylum during the first Trump administration. Republicans are seeking to revive the policy. Data and reports on MPP available below.
Republicans in Congress have wasted no time in putting forward a slew of new immigration-related legislation, such as the controversial Laken Riley Act. But they are also reviving old immigration policies from the first Trump administration in the hopes of solidifying some of them in law.
For example, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs is holding a hearing this morning (1/16/25) at 9:00 am on the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as ‘Remain in Mexico.’ I go into more detail below, but to put it simply: MPP forced asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border to wait in Mexico (outside of the U.S.) for their hearing instead of being allowed into the country to pursue their claim. As a result, MPP functioned as a bureaucratic border that led to a small fraction of these asylum seekers ever receiving humanitarian protection.
Three speakers are scheduled to give testimony in front of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs. The first two are expected to support MPP and the last, Adam Isacson, will likely oppose it. I suspect that with everything else going on in Congress, this hearing will get overlooked—but it could set the stage for legislation that could turn this old policy into new law. Once the video becomes available, I’ll update this post with a link. Here are the speakers:
Ken Cuccinelli. Ken ran the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) under the first Trump administration. His appointment was controversial (and later challenged in court) because it allowed him to run the agency without going through the congressional approval process required of agency heads. One of his more memorable moments was when he rewrote the Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty from "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” to “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.”1
Andrew Arthur. Andrew is a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a longstanding think-tank for restrictionist immigration policies. They are labelled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and were considered fairly fringe, but they have also been effective at shaping national discourse and policy in a way that puts them squarely in the middle of most Republican politicians, if not some Democratic politicians, as well. Andrew is a former immigration judge and although I don’t find him convincingly competent on immigration data questions, he’s unquestionably more technically informed than a lot of run-of-the-mill “close the border” advocates.
Adam Isacson. Adam, who on staff at the Washington Office on Latin America, is one of the foremost Latin American experts in DC and he specifically focuses on the role of the U.S. military in Latin America. Adam is also an excellent user and communicator of immigration data, which he makes available generously through his website (see “charts” posts here). I have to say, having interacted with Adam several times on immigration topics, he’s not only extremely competent, he’s also a really great person. Adam is active on Bluesky and Twitter/X.
UPDATE 1/16/25 (1:49 PM): Adam Isacson’s testimony is available online now, both his written testimony as well as the video of his testimony and discussion with senators. Adam was magnificent as always. And here is the entire hearing video with all speakers.
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What is ‘Remain in Mexico’?
The euphemistically named “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP), better known as “Remain in Mexico,” is a Trump-era policy that required asylum seekers who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border to wait for asylum hearings in dangerous parts of Northern Mexico rather than being paroled into the United States. Among the most visible consequences of MPP were a series of tent cities that sprung up in cities on the Mexican side of the border.
As a result of these conditions—and the well-documented difficulties of crossing back into the United States for their hearings—few asylum seekers obtained legal representation (crucial for asylum cases), even fewer were granted asylum, and many gave up altogether.
In short, Remain in Mexico served not simply as an expedited asylum program (which is likely how Ken Cuccinelli and Andrew Arthur will describe it tomorrow) but as an asylum deterrent program, designed to dissuade asylum seekers from trying in the first place.
Reports by the Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights First highlighted the dangers that migrants faced after being turned back at the border. I had the privilege of working with Fernanda Echavarri at Mother Jones on what I consider the best long-form article about a family’s experience with MPP—tracking their journey from the Trump administration through to when they were finally allowed into the country under the Biden administration. Read “One Family’s Escape From Trump’s Border Hell: A 130-Week Diary”.
MPP was created in late 2018, implemented in January 2019, and terminated by Joe Biden in 2021. However, the termination faced legal challenges, and a court later compelled the Biden administration to restart the program. Immigrant rights groups criticized the administration for appearing overly willing to restart—and even expand—the program in ways that were not required by the courts. Ultimately, the program was terminated completely, and some of the migrants in Remain in Mexico who still had open cases—those who had not been kidnapped, murdered, or scared off—were eventually allowed into the United States to pursue their claims. A little-known fact: CBP One was originally used to manage the entry of these MPP migrants before being expanded to all arriving asylum seekers.
Why ‘Remain in Mexico’ Now?
The effectiveness of Remain in Mexico in accomplishing its restrictive intent—and the fact that, unlike many of Trump’s immigration policies, MPP was never struck down in court or ruled illegal or unconstitutional—means that MPP is fully on the table. Republicans are wasting no time bringing it back.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Project 2025 explicitly called for the policy’s return. For example, in the section on how a second Trump administration might leverage the Department of Homeland Security to restrict immigration, the report includes two specific references to MPP:
“Migrant protection protocols. Update the statutory language [i.e., transform MPP from a policy to the law of the land] providing the basis for the Remain in Mexico program as needed to withstand judicial scrutiny and executive inaction.” (Project 2025, p. 149)
“Recommence negotiations with Mexico to fully implement the Remain in Mexico Protocols.” (Project 2025, p. 151)
MPP has always relied on some degree of consent from Mexico, which will undoubtedly be a point of contention with new Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo—as I’m sure Adam will point out.
And who wrote this chapter in Project 2025 about DHS? None other than Ken Cuccinelli who is set to speak on MPP.
Additionally, under another chapter written by Kiron Skinner, a professor at Pepperdine University, Project 2025 encourages the Department of State to initiate negotiations that would facilitate MPP on day one.
“Restoration of both domestic security and the integrity of the U.S. immigration system should start with rapid reactivation of several key initiatives in effect at the conclusion of the Trump Administration. Reimplementation of the Remain in Mexico policy, safe third-country agreements, and other measures to address the influx of non-Mexican asylum applicants at the United States-Mexico border must be Day One priorities.” (Project 2025, p. 178)
Republicans are wasting no time advancing immigration policies that align with their platform. Trump is already promising to issue 100 executive orders on day one, many of which will naturally focus on immigration enforcement. Several bills are being debated in the House and Senate, including the Laken Riley Act and the Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act (both of which I’ll address in another post). But the fact that Republicans are prioritizing MPP before Trump has even been sworn into office sends a clear message about the direction that this Congress plans to go when it comes to border policy.
The Backstory on MPP
I followed MPP closely the first time around and wrote on it in real-time, including the tumultuous months in 2021 when MPP was zombie policy—not dead and not alive. Here is a selection of those articles with key data points, graphs, and source materials.
Old TRAC Reports Related to the Migrant Protection Protocols
As you may already know, the website formerly known as TRAC has been publicly unavailable for over a week now. With no public statement from the organization and with the Trump administration set to take over in mere days, the future availability of MPP data is uncertain.
A brief digression: TRAC was a crucial source of data during MPP, but the story of how TRAC was able to be so critical was not clear to everyone—so here goes. Normally, when migrants come to the border to seek asylum, they are either turned away or allowed to go through an initial screening called a Credible Fear Interview (CFI). If they pass a CFI, they are allowed to enter the country for the purpose of pursuing their case in front of an immigration judge. Because TRAC had access to the immigration court’s docketing system, TRAC could use the codes in the court’s system that identified cases as MPP cases or that labeled hearing locations as MPP hearing locations to identify and track cases regardless of where they went in the country. That’s how we knew that so few MPP asylum cases ever found an attorney or were granted asylum compared to their non-MPP counterparts in the system.
The Wayback Machine (a project of the Internet Archives) provides us with a stopgap source of much-needed information about MPP.2 Sadly, MPP data that was publicly available through TRAC’s interactive online tools is not available through the Wayback Machine, since that data was dynamically connected to data on Syracuse University’s servers—and therefore not as easy to archive as a static report. However, TRAC’s reports are still available through the Wayback Machine. I have identified the MPP reports, exported them as PDF documents for you to download here, provided the first paragraph of each report for added context, and provided the link to the Wayback Machine so you can go back and look at the report yourself. The reports are available below in chronological order.
Hopefully this helps some of you who are looking for numbers about MPP. You may also have a look at the article I published in The Conversation on MPP and the academic article I published for the Journal of Latin American Geography.
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Thanks to John Washington’s book The Case for Open Borders for reminding me of that episode.
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I'll also recommend (at the risk of sounding like a shameless plug) my 2024 book, Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands. It documents Remain in Mexico and every other Trump 1.0 abomination, like Family Separation and Metering, through the voices of those who lived through it. It explains "safe" third-country agreements and Title 42. It traces the origin story of Ken Cuccinelli, et al, back to the fascist, fearmonger who designed it all -- Center for Immigration Reform, FAIR, US English, Prop 187, Social Contract Press, etc -- John Tanton. And it takes readers on a mass deportation flight, the likes of which Trump 2.0 will make a daily fact of life. As Crossing the Line illustrates all that went down under Trump 1.0., it is being called "a clarion call to action" and a blueprint for what's coming. Next week.