This story was originally published at Prism. President Joe Biden’s campaign promise to end former President Donald Trump’s harmful “Remain in Mexico” policy was officially broken on Monday when the program was reinstated after a federal court order. The order even expanded the policy to include all asylum-seekers from the Western hemisphere, including Haiti. Officially named the “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP), the program was implemented by the Department of Homeland Security under Trump and temporarily returned immigrants to Mexico during the pendency of their removal proceedings, forcing thousands to return to unsafe circumstances. The program also required that asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for their asylum cases to be heard in an already backlogged immigration court system, leaving them in the extremely dangerous situations they were trying to escape. According to a joint report with Human Rights First, between February 2019 and February 2021, there were at least 1,544 publicly reported cases of murder, rape, torture, kidnapping, and other violent assaults against asylum-seekers and migrants forced to return to Mexico under this program. These attacks include 341 cases of children who were kidnapped or nearly kidnapped. “We are gravely concerned about the dangers that asylum-seekers and migrants who are returned to Mexico will face because of the reinstatement of this policy,” says Kennji Kizuka, ​​associate director of research and analysis for refugee protection at Human Rights First. Read more