MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s president said on Wednesday she has not agreed to accept non-Mexican migrants seeking asylum in the United States, a day after her new U.S. counterpart announced the return of a program to do so.
On Tuesday, the administration of new U.S. President Donald Trump announced it would bring back its “Remain in Mexico” program, formerly known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, that forced non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their often prolonged cases in the United States were resolved.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters that such a move would require the country receiving the asylum-seekers to agree, and that Mexico had not done so.
She said her government was offering humanitarian assistance to deported migrants of other nationalities along with “mechanisms to be repatriated” if they voluntarily want to return to their home countries.
On Monday, Trump returned to the White House vowing to press ahead with aggressive immigration and border security measures, including the declaration of a national emergency at the southern border despite a sharp reduction in crossings over the past year.
The MPP program was initially launched in 2019 during Trump’s previous term as president in a bid to deter what officials then described as fraudulent asylum claims.
Human rights advocates pushed back against the policy, arguing that it endangered migrants, including families with young children, by forcing them to live in border encampments vulnerable to organized crime.
In 2021, former President Joe Biden ended the program, citing precarious and dangerous conditions on the Mexican side of the border.
Also on Wednesday, Sheinbaum noted that her Foreign Minister Juan Ramon de la Fuente and newly-confirmed U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had a “very cordial” phone call a day earlier in which they discussed migration and security matters.
(Reporting by Diego Ore and Ana Isabel Martinez; Writing by Sarah Kinosian; Editing by David Alire Garcia and Alistair Bell)
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