In July 2019, I crossed the international bridge from El Paso into the sprawling Mexican border city of Juárez to gauge the effects of President Donald Trump’s so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy.
On that blazing hot summer day, as 20,000 of an eventual 75,000 had just been expelled under the policy, I made my way by taxi to a shelter high up on a rise in the dangerous neighborhood of Anapra. The shelter is within eyesight of Mexico’s side of the American wall and El Paso beyond. I was soon interviewing recent expellee Veronica Janeth Tejeda of Yoro in northwestern Honduras as she played with one of her two expelled children in an outdoor yard between small residential buildings.
Veronica and many other immigrants expelled under Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy back then almost perfectly illustrate the policy’s power to end the greatest border crisis in U.S. history. Their 2019 testimonials matter greatly now that Trump is about to give the controversial policy a comeback that foretells swift operational control of the U.S. southern border.
Recall that before Trump rolled out Remain in Mexico 1.0, the Flores court settlement required (and still does) Border Patrol to quickly release border-crossing families with children inside the United States, where they sink roots during yearslong asylum court backlogs. That prize proved irresistible for hundreds of thousands from across the world.
But introducing Remain in Mexico 1.0 (officially the Migrant Protection Protocols) in 2019 took all wind out of the sails. Border Patrol agents could now quickly expel illegal border crossers back into Mexico and make them wait out the years of U.S. asylum protection claims there. Such a highly deterrent policy made those ineligible for U.S. entry want to stay home instead. No one, after all, illegally crosses for the Great Mexican Dream.
That’s why Remain in Mexico worked so well then and foreshadows a more tranquil border norm very soon again.
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