Migrants line up at the border, awaiting the end of Title 42

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EL PASO — As the clock ticked down to the end of a policy used to expel migrants from the U.S. nearly 3 million times over the past three years, the lines formed again on a patch of American soil between the Rio Grande and the border wall.

Hundreds of migrants — men, women and children — stood in ragged lines, waiting near a gate in the wall for their turn to pass through. They were watched by Border Patrol agents and National Guard members in fatigues. For the moment, no one moved.

A group of four Venezuelan men with a boy and a Colombian couple with their 2-year-old son waded across the shallow river and were turned back by National Guard. The migrants said the soldiers told them the border was closed and they should go to another area 5 miles east where agents may let them pass.

The public health emergency order known as Title 42 — which has been largely used as an immigration enforcement policy to quickly expel migrants, including asylum-seekers, trying to enter the U.S. — ends late Thursday night.

In preparation, federal, state and border officials across the roughly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border have implemented a series of policies to prepare for what they fear will be a chaotic crisis as thousands of migrants who have been forced to wait in Mexican border cities make a crucial decision: Follow the Biden administration’s new rules and make an appointment to request asylum, or try their luck crossing the border en masse.

In South Texas, video footage from journalists on Wednesday showed hundreds of immigrants gathering on the banks of the Rio Grande near Brownsville. In neighboring Hidalgo County, County Judge Richard Cortez issued a seven-day disaster declaration on Thursday.

“I have received credible information from officials with Customs and Border Protection that large groups of migrants are probing our international border in search of crossing points,” he said. “I have decided to declare this emergency as a first step in securing all available state and federal resources to ensure the health and safety of our residents.”

El Paso, Laredo and Brownsville had previously declared states of emergency. On Wednesday, El Paso city officials converted two vacant middle schools into migrant shelters using federal money.

In El Paso, thousands of migrants have crossed the border in the days leading up to the change, many of them immediately surrendering to Border Patrol agents. Some have avoided detection and entered the country illegally, sleeping in the streets of the city’s downtown as they try to find transportation to the nation’s interior.

Earlier this week, immigration agents handed out Spanish-language flyers to migrants asking those without permission to be in the U.S. to turn themselves in. On Tuesday, hundreds of migrants who had been camping outside of El Paso’s Sacred Heart Church did so; agents gave them a notice to appear at a later date at immigration offices across the country.

Since March 2020, when the Trump administration invoked Title 42 for the first time, immigration agents have used it about 2.7 million times at the southern border amid a dramatic increase in migration: In fiscal year 2022, which ended in September, agents apprehended immigrants a record-breaking 2.3 million times at the southern border.

Apprehensions have hit 1.2 million on the southern border during the first six months of the current fiscal year.

On Tuesday, border agents apprehended more than 11,000 people who crossed the border illegally — nearly double the number in a typical day, The New York Times reported. After Title 42 lifts, U.S. officials are expecting up to 13,000 migrants to cross the southern border every day.

Ruben Garcia, director of the network of migrant shelters called Annunciation House based in El Paso, said that as of Thursday afternoon, Border Patrol agents already had released 400 migrants to his organization’s shelters — a number he said is higher than normal but manageable.

But that could change after Title 42 ends, Garcia said.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said when asked what tomorrow could look like.

On Wednesday, Border Patrol chief Raul Ortiz told reporters in El Paso that he does not expect an increase in illegal crossings after Thursday night.

“The increases that we’ve seen in the last five to six days, I think were really the surge,” he said, according to news outlets. “I think that what we see now is a continued effort by some to message incorrectly that once Title 42 goes away, it’s going to be a free-for-all along the border.”

Among the latest changes in immigration policy, the Biden administration finalized a rule that went into effect Thursday that will deny asylum to migrants who passed through a third country where they could have sought asylum instead.

After Thursday, immigration agents will seek to deport migrants who attempt to enter the country without first having set up an appointment to enter the U.S. through a port of entry, using a government cellphone app known as CBP One. Migrants also have the option of applying for asylum at one of the new processing centers in Guatemala or Colombia, which will give successful applicants the option to legally enter Canada, Spain or the U.S.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection acting Commissioner Troy Miller on Thursday said that Mexico will continue to accept 30,000 migrants monthly from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua if they try to enter the U.S. illegally and are deported.

“Migrants who enter the United States unlawfully by crossing the southwest border, and not via a lawful pathway, will be returned to Mexico and may be transported away from Mexico’s northern border to locations in southern Mexico,” Miller said. “As we have said many times, the border is not open to irregular migration.”

Immigrant rights advocates have criticized the Biden administration for the third-country asylum policy, which is similar to what the Trump administration had proposed.

Michele Heisler, the medical director for Physicians for Human Rights and professor of internal medicine and public health at the University of Michigan, said she welcomes the end of Title 42, which she said had no public health benefit, but criticized the Biden administration’s new asylum policy as “cruel.”

“This new rule … is likely to cause significant harm to a population that is already highly vulnerable due to the factors that made them seek protection in the first place, compounded by the conditions faced on their journey to the border, including extortion, kidnapping, rape and other forms of physical and psychological violence,” she said.

Jayme Lozano Carver contributed to this story.

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