'We Are So Happy': Migrants Stranded by Trump Are Finally Entering the US

[Judi Lynn]

The end of the controversial MPP policy introduced by former U.S President Donald Trump is a huge relief to migrants who have been waiting in Mexico's border cities.
EG
By Emily Green

MEXICO CITY - After waiting for a year and 10 months in Mexico to cross into the U.S., Alida Jeannethe Barritos and her husband walked across the bridge Thursday into Brownsville, Texas in less than an hour.

“It’s so pretty here,” she said in an interview from a Greyhound bus winding its way to Kentucky. “We are so happy. And with God’s help, we can continue to move forward and help our families.”

Barritos, 45, and her husband were among the first group of 27 migrants from the Matamoros border camp to enter the U.S. under a new immigration policy introduced by President Joe Biden that will gradually allow thousands of asylum seekers to wait for their immigration hearings in the U.S., instead of in Mexico.

The change brings to an end former President Donald Trump’s controversial Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program that sent 70,000 migrants to Mexico to wait for a decision in their immigration cases. The program was widely criticized by migrant and human rights advocates for sending asylum seekers to Mexico’s most dangerous cities, where many were preyed on by cartels,kidnapped and extorted.

Biden started gradually rolling back the program last week, with some asylum seekers under MPP permitted to cross into San Ysidro, California. But the rollout was delayed for several days in Matamoros because of a winter storm and other problems. The Matamoros encampment has become emblematic of MPP, where, at its height, some 2,500 children and adults seeking asylum in the U.S. were living in makeshift tents on the steps of the Rio Grande River.

More:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wx89j5/we-are-so-happy-migrants-stranded-by-trump-are-finally-entering-the-us