As of mid-September, more than 45,000 migrants have been returned to Mexico to await their court proceedings under the sweeping Trump policy known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). The measure—which rolled out in January in California before expanding to El Paso, Laredo, and Brownsville—has swiftly gutted the U.S. asylum system. Thousands of migrants have given up on their legal claims and returned home, rather than face kidnappings and violence in Mexico. And those who do make it to their court dates face a secretive, rushed, and skewed process that makes success extraordinarily difficult.
According to court data compiled by Syracuse University, less than 2 percent of migrants in MPP have found lawyers to represent them as of August 31. The same data show only two migrants in the program have won asylum.
In Laredo and Brownsville, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has taken the unusual step of building tent court facilities alongside the ports of entry. There, members of the press and public are barred from entry. Instead, journalists must go to the immigration courts in San Antonio, Harlingen, and other cities, where the judges hear the cases by video.
