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NOGALES, Sonora — The U.S. government on Thursday began sending asylum seekers back across the international line here to await court hearings that will be scheduled roughly 350 miles away in El Paso.

About 30 people were returned to Nogales, Sonora, on Thursday after the Trump administration expanded the Migrant Protection Protocols, known informally as “Remain in Mexico,� which require tens of thousands of asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their U.S. immigration court hearings.

Until this week, the U.S. government drove some asylum seekers from Nogales, ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, to El Paso so they could be returned to Juarez, Mexico, to wait.

Among the first asylum seekers returned to the Sonoran border city was a woman with a baby swaddled in a blue-and-white cloth and strapped to her back. She clambered into a Nogales, Sonora, police pickup truck on Thursday afternoon, joining about a dozen other asylum seekers, including several children, in the bed of the pickup.

In the moments before they were whisked off to the offices of a Mexican aid organization, and then to the San Juan Bosco migrant shelter, one man said he was from Cuba and another said he was from Guatemala. They said they were returned to Nogales, Sonora, Thursday under “MPP.�

Gilda Loureiro, director of the San Juan Bosco migrant shelter said the migrants hadn’t made it to the shelter yet but that it was prepared and has a capacity of about 400.

“We’re going to take up to the capacity we have,� she said.

Nogales is now the seventh border crossing — and the first in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ — through which U.S. authorities return migrants to Mexico to await court hearings. The policy was introduced in January 2019 in San Diego, according to a news release from the Department of Homeland Security.

For the foreseeable future, 30 asylum seekers are going to be returned to Nogales, Sonora, every day, said Rafael Garay Cardenas, an assistant to that city’s mayor, who helps keep track of asylum seekers’ spots in line as they wait to speak to U.S. officials at the port of entry.

The change in policy, which will apply to all border crossings in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, was prompted by asylum seekers trying to illegally cross the border by running through vehicle lanes to the port in Nogales, Cardenas said.

All of the asylum seekers sent to Nogales, Sonora, will have their immigration court hearings in El Paso, according to the U.S. Border Patrol’s ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Sector.

Asylum seekers waiting in Nogales, Sonora, will need to make their own way to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where they will meet U.S. officials at the border in order to cross into El Paso for their immigration court hearings. Then they are supposed to return themselves to Nogales, Sonora.

U.S. officials plan to decide each asylum claim in no more than three hearings, Cardenas said.

The Border Patrol’s ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Sector declined to provide the nationalities, ages or other demographic information of 18 people the Border Patrol returned to Nogales, Sonora, on Thursday.

The ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Field Office, which handles asylum seekers who wait their turn to speak with U.S. officials at ports of entry, "processed approximately a dozen migrants" to Nogales, Sonora on Thursday under the Migrant Protection Protocols, according to spokeswoman Teresa Small. 

More than 56,000 people were sent back to Mexico under MPP by the end of November, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Of the more than 24,000 cases that have been decided, only 117, or less than 1%, have been granted asylum or some other form of relief allowing them to stay in the United States.

U.S. authorities have lauded the program, saying it’s helped to significantly reduce illegal border crossings. The Border Patrol apprehended just over 33,000 people along the Southwest border in November, compared to 144,000 in May, when border crossings peaked.

A Human Rights First report released in December documented at least 636 public reports of violence against asylum seekers returned to Mexico including rape, kidnapping and torture. Human Rights First said that was a steep increase over October, when the group had identified 343 attacks, and noted the latest figure is surely an under-count because most crime victims don’t report incidents.