On February 21, more than 700 unaccompanied children came across the U.S.-Mexico border and are now being housed in the same detention facilities the Trump administration had opened and closed – now reopened by the Biden administration.

Some arrivals are part of President Biden’s reversal of the former administration’s policy generally known as ‘Remain in Mexico’. It required migrants seeking asylum, many of them families, to wait in Mexican border cities for their claims to be resolved, rather than in the U.S. as had previously been the case.

The Biden administration announced last week it would start allowing some migrants in the program to enter the U.S. The government claims
the process is moving slowly because large numbers of people could pose a public health risk due to the coronavirus pandemic. But the message received in Mexican border cities was simple – Joe Biden is now letting people in.

27 asylum seekers from a Mexican border camp entered the U.S. on Thursday, they had been living in a makeshift camp in Matamoros, Mexico, some have been waiting and living in the camp for more than a year.