In March 2020, as the pandemic raged around the world, America closed its doors. The Trump administration used a 1940s public-health ordinance to turn away virtually all immigrants, even blocking would-be asylum seekers that international law requires the U.S. to admit. Even Trump’s meager and unnecessarily cruel immigration entry policies were shut down by this order. Nearly all metering lists, which limit the number of people who can request asylum per day at a port of entry, were shut down. Few were added to the “Remain in Mexico,” or MPP, program, which required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their asylum hearing.
One year later, the Biden administration is peeling back the layers that block asylum. Biden stopped all additions to the MPP program in January. In February, he began to slowly process and admit at least 29,000 asylum seekers with open cases in the Remain in Mexico program. But President Biden has left that key Trump border closure policy in place. Its endurance means that there is still virtually no asylum at the border for anyone who has arrived since March 2020.
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