Appeals court upholds order requiring revival of "Remain in Mexico" border policy

A federal appeals court on Monday night upheld a lower court order that required the U.S. to reinstate the so-called "Remain in Mexico" program along the southern border, complicating the Biden administration's efforts to terminate a Trump-era policy it has strongly denounced.

Agreeing with a ruling from U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a three-judge panel at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said the Biden administration's decision to terminate the policy earlier this year violated legal administrative procedures and federal immigration law.

Officially called the Migration Protection Protocols, or MPP, the policy devised by the Trump administration required 70,000 non-Mexican migrants to wait in Mexico, often in squalid encampments and crime-ridden border towns, while their asylum requests were processed by U.S. courts.