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The camp sprouted after the 2019 rollout of the Migrant Protection Protocols by the Trump administration. The program would end what a Trump administration official derided as “catch and release” for those seeking asylum because of persecution in their homelands.
Under the policy, first enacted in January 2019 along the Mexico-California border, most newly arriving asylum seekers could no longer await their court dates in the U.S. By the summer of last year, the program was in place in Matamoros and the camp grew to accommodate people waiting to be summoned by U.S. authorities for hearings at new tent courts in Brownsville.
Of 15,600 asylum cases that have been handled at the Brownsville bridge courts under the program, only 128 have been granted asylum or some sort of legal relief, according to the Syracuse University-based research center called Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
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