Both Pinheiro and Austin Kocher, assistant research professor in the Newhouse School of Public Communication and a researcher at TRAC, question whether those like Fajardo who were able to attend their MPP asylum hearings, and ultimately lost, actually received a fair hearing. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down immigration courts, and made virtual MPP hearings commonplace. But many asylum seekers struggled to access the right technology, lawyers on the ground have told TIME, and in cases where the person does have access to technology, glitches and other failures have become a challenge during hearings. Prevalent violence against asylum seekers stranded in Mexican border cities also became a barrier to attendance, according to a report by Buzzfeed News.

Kocher points to data showing that nationally between Oct. 1, 2019 and Sept. 30, 2020, nearly 30% of asylum cases were won in the U.S., and in the prior year, the grant rate was higher. But for those MPP cases that have been decided since the program began at the start of 2019, only 1.7% of the cases that have been decided were approved. “That grant rate is so low,” Kocher says. “That really suggests that the entire program itself was designed to make asylum impossible.”

“The purpose of the Migrant Protection Protocols was to undermine the asylum process along the U.S.-Mexico border,” Kocher adds. “One has to ask whether any of the proceedings that took place, any of the hearings that took place, were legitimate…I would say that both the data and also on-the-ground reporting shows that that was not the case.”

For now, Fajardo and others like her will wait. But Kocher, says, it is possible that many under MPP have given up at this point or have slipped through the cracks. According to TRAC, only about 40% of those with open MPP cases were actually able to enter the U.S. as of May 2021. There have been challenges finding those who qualify and getting them to sign up to go through the process, Kocher says, and there’s a chance a similar pattern may occur during phase two of the wind-down. “In many ways MPP has sort of already had its [intended] effect,” he says, “convincing people to leave the border and essentially give up hope that they were gonna have a fair shot.”