The Trump administration is intensifying measures to curb the flow of Central American asylum seekers crossing into the United States from Mexico, officials say, including sending more people back to Mexico to wait for their asylum claims to be heard by US courts.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said on Monday that US Customs and Border Protection would speed up the reassignment of 750 officers to areas dealing with the largest numbers of immigrants.
US President Donald Trump has threatened to close the border if Mexico doesn't halt a surge of people, often travelling as families from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Closing the border would potentially disrupt millions of legal border crossings and billions of dollars in trade.
One policy put in place earlier this year to return asylum seekers to Mexico, dubbed the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), will be "immediately" expanded, Nielsen said in a statement on Monday.
The policy is already being challenged in court by civil rights groups.
As of March 26, approximately 370 migrants had been returned to Mexico since the program began in late January, a Mexican official said last week.
Critics of the administration say the policy hampers asylum cases, by making it far more difficult for those immigrants to obtain legal assistance. People who have been returned to Mexico to wait are struggling to find lawyers and receive notice of their proceedings in US courts.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday that Mexico would help to regulate the flow of Central Americans passing through its territory, but the root causes behind the phenomenon - which include violence and poverty in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador - must be tackled.
