EL PASO: Several Central American migrants seeking asylum in the United States were allowed to return barehanded on Thursday. They were forced to wait in one of Mexico’s most violent cities, supported by faith leaders who oppose the controversial U.S. migration policy. A couple with three young children who fled violence in Honduras and a Salvadoran young man with cognitive disabilities crossed into El Paso from Ciudad Juarez, said Bishop of El Paso Mark Seitz, who helped plead their case with officials at the border.

Their return came on the same afternoon that the U.S. House of Representatives passed a $4.6 billion aid package to address a migrant surge at the U.S.-Mexico border. The aid package was galvanized in recent days by a photo of drowned migrants and reports of horrendous conditions for detained children.

The attention was also drawn towards the policy that sends asylum seekers to Mexico border cities while waiting for U.S. courts to process their applications, known as Remain in Mexico or Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). The program started in January under the Trump administration and has drawn outrage from U.S. faith leaders, rights groups and others. It has now affected more than 15,000 asylum seekers, mainly from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Under a deal struck with Mexico on July 7 to stave off tariffs threatened by Trump, MPP is being expanded to more cities and applied to new nationalities including Cubans. Although migration officials in El Paso initially said that the Honduran family and Salvadoran man had to continue to wait out the asylum process in Ciudad Juarez just opposite the border, Seitz said that he countered that the migrants had special circumstances and deserved to remain in the United States. (Agencies)