U.S.-bound asylum seekers will be sent back to at least two additional Mexican border cities later this week to wait for their claims to be processed, officials said, with one of the cities in a region that is among Mexico’s most chaotic and violent.
The policy known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), or Remain in Mexico, will be implemented later this week in Nuevo Laredo in the northern state of Tamaulipas, which borders Texas, said two Mexican officials with knowledge of the matter, who declined to be identified.
Tamaulipas is home to the Gulf and Zeta cartels that include people-smuggling and kidnapping among their criminal activities.
One of the Mexican officials said the policy would also be expanded to San Luis Rio Colorado in the northern state of Sonora, which borders Arizona. Mexican newspaper Reforma reported immigration official Julio César Navarro Contreras as saying San Luis Rio Colorado was on the list.
The latest expansion follows high-stakes negotiations to fend off trade tariffs.