Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

by Jonathan Blitzer

The seed of what became MPP was first planted in 2014. At the time, it was not an actionable policy, or even a full-fledged proposal, but an idea for a paradigm shift. Officials at DHS imagined a pilot program that the US could develop with the Mexican government. Together they would set up a shelter system in Northern Mexico with the help of international relief organizations. The population of people would be small, somewhere between five hundred and a thousand asylum seekers. They would receive housing, food, and legal services while in Mexico, then cross the border for hearings before an immigration judge. The scheme was never seriously considered—it was still too open-ended—but it wasn’t shot down. Four years later, it was reborn, with only a faint resemblance to the earlier idea.