Exclusive: Asylum seekers returned to Mexico rarely win bids to wait in U.S.

Instead, she was sent back to Mexico under a Trump administration policy called the “Migrant Protection Protocols”(MPP), which has forced more than 11,000 asylum seekers to wait on the Mexican side of the border for their U.S. court cases to be completed. Once asylum seekers are ordered to wait in Mexico, their chances of getting that decision reversed on safety grounds - allowing them to wait out their proceedings in the United States - are exceedingly small, a Reuters analysis of U.S. immigration court data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) shows. Of the 8,718 migrants in the program Reuters identified in the EOIR data, only 106 – about 1% - had their cases transferred off the MPP court docket, allowing them to wait in the United States while their asylum claims are adjudicated. A DHS spokeswoman, who declined to be named, said the department could not comment on Reuters’ findings but said the program allows the United States “to more effectively assist legitimate asylum-seekers and individuals fleeing persecution.” Many Central American migrants choose to travel through Mexico en route to the United States, so “the great majority” are likely not persecuted there, the U.S. government has said in court filings.