The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Mexican Ministry of the Interior announced Monday that the Mexican Interior Repatriation Program (MIRP) - a bilateral, voluntary program that ensures the safe return of Mexican nationals found to be unlawfully in the Sonora Arizona desert region of the United States to their places of residence in the Mexican interior - has resumed for the eighth consecutive summer.

First initiated in 2004, MIRP was designed as a bilateral effort between the United States and Mexico to reduce the loss of human life and to break the cycle of organized crime linked to the smuggling, trafficking and exploitation of migrants along the Arizona/Mexico border. Under MIRP, Mexican nationals apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol in the Yuma and Tucson sectors are taken to DHS facilities in Nogales and Yuma, Ariz., where candidates are medically screened, meet with Mexican Consulate officials and are offered the opportunity to voluntarily participate in the program.