The announcement came after a judge lifted an injunction preventing the Joe Biden administration from scrapping the policy titled “Stay in Mexico.”

Under the policy, adopted in 2019 by former President Donald Trump, tens of thousands of asylum seekers have been sent to Mexico until they are due to appear in US court for their hearing on the immigration.

The program was seen as cruel and dangerous, leaving vulnerable people in dangerous conditions in border towns.

The policy will be removed “in a prompt and orderly manner,” the US agency said in a statement.

No one else will be included and those who cross the border to attend their hearings will not be sent back to Mexico, the entity added.

The Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP), as the policy is officially called, “has endemic flaws, imposes unwarranted human costs, and diverts resources and personnel from other priority tasks to secure our borders,” the department added. .

A presidential promise with resistance at the state level

Shortly after taking office, Biden tried to drop the measure as part of what he called a more humane approach to migration.

But several states with Republican governments, led by Texas, sued the federal government and a court in the capital ordered the policy reinstated.

The case reached the Supreme Court, which ruled on June 30 that Biden had the power to end the program.

From the start of the policy in January 2019 until its initial suspension, at least 70,000 people were sent to Mexico according to the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit organization founded in 1987 that advocates for immigrants.

The Trump administration has argued that the policy would help curb illegal immigration to the United States.

During Biden’s tenure, the authorities prevented the entry of more than 200,000 people who tried to enter illegally and were returnedeither by the PPM or by another border provision adopted by the coronavirus pandemic.