In recent years, migrants have set up camp in Matamoros in anticipation of access to the US. Immigrant advocates call the situation a humanitarian crisis just a foot from the U.S. southern border that has formed as a result of a harsh Trump administration policy.
President Joe Biden has ended the Trump era, informally known as “living in Mexico,” and the process of allowing migrants to be subjected to it. The camp in Matamoros is one of the many places where migrants were forced to stay and the sign of the policy became “stay in Mexico”.
DHS said on Saturday the Biden administration, in partnership with international organizations, had completed the registration of individuals staying in the camp.
“We are no longer registering people in the Matamoros camp and no one arriving in the camp will be able to access this phase program through their physical presence there,” a DHS spokesman said. “A small number of individuals remaining in the camp have been relocated to other locations identified by our international organization partners that offer greater protection than the informal camp.”
Efforts to recruit migrants who are subject to the “stay in Mexico” policy are ongoing, but so far the U.S. has processed more than 700 people in the port city of Brownsville, according to the spokesman. The Biden government estimates that some 25,000 migrants still have active issues under the program. Migrants must test for Covid-19 before entering the US.
The “stay in Mexico” policy, which went into effect in January 2019, was an unprecedented departure from previous protocols, which allowed the entry of migrants as they went through their immigration trials in the United States.