Two-Democrat appointed judges voted on Friday to block the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocol program, a policy that forces asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases are heard in the U.S., which came after news broke earlier in the day that Mexico had confirmed its first cases of coronvirus.
The program, commonly referred to as “Remain in Mexico,” was designed to stop illegal immigrants from exploiting loopholes in the U.S. immigration system. The Washington Post reported:
The Trump administration has claimed that the migrant families have been exploiting loopholes in U.S. law to secure their release, knowing of the court-mandated 20-day limit for detaining children. The MPP program was designed to prevent families from entering the United States and later skipping their court hearings to avoid deportation; instead, families have been sitting on the Mexico side of the border.
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Judges Richard A. Paez and William A. Fletcher, both appointed by President Bill Clinton, voted to uphold the injunction, while Ferdinand F. Fernandez, a President George H.W. Bush appointee, disagreed.
The ruling came after Mexican Assistant Health Secretary Hugo Lopez-Gatell announced earlier in the day that Mexico had confirmed its first two cases of the coronavirus, which originated in China, inside its borders.
The Associated Press reported:
Hugo Lopez-Gatell said one of the patients is in Mexico City and the other in the northern state of Sinaloa. While a second test is still pending on that case, he said, “We are treating this as confirmed.” Neither is seriously ill; one is in isolation at a hospital, the other is isolated at a hotel.
At least five family contacts of the first patient have been placed in isolation. He said the men had traveled to the northern Italian region where there has been an outbreak and had returned to Mexico between last Friday and Saturday.
The ruling by the Democrat-appointed judges combined with the news that Mexico has now multiple confirmed cases of the coronavirus is likely to anger President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly sought to strengthen border security for national security reasons.
A White House official told The New York Times that Trump “views shutting the borders to infected people as critical to keeping the country safe and wants to be seen as managing a proper response” to the coronavirus pandemic.
Immigration attorney Matthew Kolken predicted that “the Trump administration’s next move will be to institute a travel ban for nationals of countries from Central America citing national security concerns relating to the Coronavirus.”
I am willing to bet that the Trump administration's next move will be to institute a travel ban for nationals of countries from Central America citing national security concerns relating to the Coronavirus. https://t.co/PGqvJTVK4u
— Matthew Kolken (@mkolken) February 28, 2020