[Wash Times] Asylum-seekers streaming across Mexico to reach the U.S. will be shipped back across the border and made to wait in Mexico while their cases are decided, the Trump administration announced Thursday in a power-play bid to end the latest surge of illegal immigration.Mexico has agreed to the plan and will offer humanitarian visas and work permits to the migrants ‐ chiefly Central Americans ‐ who will now wait on the southern side of the border, sometimes for years, for a chance to enter the U.S.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the goal is to end the "catch and release" practice that has enticed a wave of illegal immigrants to head north in recent years, convinced that they will be able to make bogus asylum claims and then slip into the shadows.
"They will not be able to disappear into the United States. They will have to wait for approval to come into the United States," Ms. Nielsen told the House Judiciary Committee. "If they are granted asylum by a U.S. judge, they will be welcomed into America. If they are not, they will be removed to their home countries."
Ms. Nielsen is triggering a 1996 law that says people who cross a land border seeking entry can be sent back and made to wait.