U.S. to send migrants back to Mexico to wait out asylum requests

WASHINGTON/MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The United States will soon send non-Mexican migrants who cross the U.S. southern border back to wait in Mexico while their U.S. asylum requests are processed, a major change in immigration policy, the Trump administration announced on Thursday.

Immigrant advocates and human rights experts quickly denounced the policy change as illegal and violating the rights of refugees.

Mexico’s government said that it would accept some of those migrants for humanitarian reasons, in what many will see as an early concession to U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration by Mexico’s new president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who took office on Dec. 1.

“We want to discourage those who are claiming asylum fraudulently,” U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told a congressional committee on Thursday, describing the plan.

In response to the plan, Mexico’s foreign ministry underscored that it still has the right to admit or reject the entry of foreigners into its territory.

“Mexico’s government has decided to take the following actions to benefit migrants, in particular unaccompanied and accompanied minors, and to protect the rights of those who want to start an asylum process in the United States,” the foreign ministry said.