Immigration judges in San Diego are disrupting the Trump administration's policy on sending asylum seekers back to Mexico by terminating such cases at a higher rate than seen in any other court in the country.
The San Diego judges terminated 33% of more than 12,600 Migrant Protection Protocols cases, or the "Remain in Mexico" policy, according to data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, reports The Wall Street Journal.
In comparison, in El Paso, the busiest immigration court, judges terminated fewer than 1% of more than 14,000 such cases.
Under MPP, migrants who enter the U.S. illegally or who appear at official places of entry along the U.S. border seeking asylum are sent to Mexico, where they await future American court dates.
In San Diego, the nine judges repeatedly rule that due process of asylum seekers waiting in Mexico were violated, including that they had not been properly notified of their court dates.
Customs and Border Protection, which carries out the MPP policy at the border, and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to the Journal's request for comment, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement has filed an appeal with a Justice Department panel, questioning if judges are making a mistake when they terminate cases for migrants who do not show up for court.
The decision to terminate cases does not mean migrants are permitted to remain in the United States, but it does keep them from being blocked from entering the country for 10 years and makes it more difficult for them to be charged with committing a felony if they try to cross the border illegally in the future, notes The Journal.
More than 55,000 asylum-seeking migrants have been sent to Mexico to wait for their court hearings. Through the end of September, 5,000 were ordered deported and 11 were granted relief, including asylum, said TRAC.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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