Six months after federal courts ordered resumption of Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) at the southern border, the Biden administration says it is doing so in “good faith.” But is it? Actions by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) say no.
A grand total of 410 migrants were returned to Mexico during December and January. That’s combined, not per month. In that same two-month period, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “encountered” 332,781 illegal border crossers, making the ”good faith” rate of return 0.0012 percent. For the 62-day period, DHS sent an average of 6.6 people per day back to Mexico under MPP.
Ever since the administration was ordered to restart the Remain in Mexico program, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been looking for ways to subvert it. In the course of multiple “reviews,” the secretary reportedly concluded that MPP has “endemic flaws” and is not fixable.
But Mayorkas’ disingenuous, passive-aggressive workarounds aren’t fixing anything. Rather, they encourage more illegal migration while enabling continued abuse of America’s badly strained asylum system.
The Biden administration actions – and inactions — are “working exactly as they planned,” reports Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla.
Lankford recently spent at week on the Texas-Mexico border, meeting with officials from Border Patrol, CBP and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In Brownsville, the senator toured a large-scale facility set up for MPP. “The building is empty,” he reported.
“So far, they have evaluated 60 people who might be eligible for [MPP], but as they went through the review process, they excused [released]57 of those and were only running three people through it, three.”
“Federal taxpayers are paying millions of dollars for a decorative item so the Biden administration can tell the courts we’re implementing MPP but not actually doing it,” Lankford concluded.
When the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments next month on the administration’s conduct of the MPP program, Mayorkas & Co. will have some explaining to do.