EAGLE PASS, Texas — Above and below the southern border, officials in the United States watched thousands of migrants in Mexico wait.
Wednesday is the day that a public health policy allowing for the rapid deportation of migrants during the coronavirus pandemic, known as Title 42, is set to be lifted by federal court order, leaving a large number of A large number of asylum seekers spilled across the border.
Supreme Court, in its own order this week, delayed the policy’s end date by at least a few more days. But it is still expected that a spike in arrivals not seen at the border in many years will soon take place.
And so the tense limbo and uncertainty enveloped both sides on Wednesday. Many migrants hoping to once again be allowed to cross and seek asylum were held back, while others pushed ahead, crossing the Rio Grande with children floating in the water or climbing over bushes to avoid detection.
From a hilltop outside the border city of Eagle Pass, members of the National Guard, sent to the border by the State of Texas, surveyed the Rio Grande alongside armored personnel carriers, positioned to have visible from Mexico as a deterrent. Along the river, a federal surveillance balloon hovered over a famous crossing just north of town.
In El Paso, new concertina strings were laid around the riverbanks in an area that thousands of migrants have recently crossed. A National Guard member shouted in Spanish as migrants crossed the shallows: “It’s illegal to cross!” Some turned around, while others continued to cross.
Roberto Guanipa, 39, a Venezuelan, who witnessed the scene from Ciudad Juárez, on the Mexican side, said: “This is just a way to intimidate us, to prevent us from trying to cross the border. “We are trying to line up and apply for legal asylum. We are not trying to cross the border illegally.”
The Biden administration has predicted a spike in arrivals as the pandemic-era policy ends, deploying more personnel to the border, including staff from agencies that are not normally present. The Department of Homeland Security has said it needs $3.4 billion in additional funding to meet the challenge, but New funding package of the National Assemblyreleased on Tuesday, didn’t make it.
An administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to forward internal discussions, said the department is likely to face 12,000 illegal border crossings a day after the policy ends, with resources to manage about 4,000.
The actual date the policy will lift remained uncertain on Wednesday as the Supreme Court reviewed emergency applications from 19 Republican-led states, including Texas, seeking to maintain that policy. Asylum advocates have sued to end the policy, arguing that there is no longer a reasonable health basis to deny migrants the legal right to claim safe harbor in the United States. Ky.
Also uncertain on Wednesday were the steps federal officials could take to try to stop illegal border crossings after Title 42 ends.
The White House and immigration officials have considered banning asylum for migrants traveling through another country to reach the United States, but not seeking asylum in that country first. The government said any new policy restricting access to asylum would be rolled out alongside a new route for some migrants.
Even with public health policy in place, intersections continue to increase, especially in El Paso. This policy is not used uniformly, largely because the Biden administration allows humanitarian exemptions and the US government’s inability to repatriate people from some countries because of strained diplomatic relations.
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El Paso has averaged around 2,500 newcomers in recent days, overwhelming existing infrastructure. Mayor Oscar Leeser said he had been informed by Mexican officials that thousands of migrants were on their way.
The city is using two closed schools and the administrative center to house migrants in the coming days, when temperatures are expected to drop to dangerous levels. Mr. Leeser calls all of these measures “Bands”.
“The immigration system is broken and we all know it,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “But at the end of the day, something has to change, because this is not a permanent solution.”
Ricardo Samaniego, El Paso County judge, said what he doesn’t want is a show of force along the river, pointing to actions by the Texas National Guard in recent days.
“Witnessing all the state activities and uncoordinated activities worries me from a humanitarian perspective,” said Samaniego, the top county official. He added that preventing migrants from accessing Border Patrol agents and applying for asylum “could be illegal from a federal law perspective.”
However, the presence of additional law enforcement in Texas seems to send a message to many on the Mexican side. The queue waiting to be processed next to a tall metal fence on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez numbered in the hundreds, a far cry from the thousands who waited just last week.
Many migrants waiting just across the border from El Paso were glued to their phones on Wednesday, looking for the latest news on public health policy. Others have stayed more inside Mexico, knowing that sleeping on the cold ground next to the river is useless until something changes.
Carlos Hernandez, 40, who left Venezuela in September, said: “They know that there is no reason to come now. “Others are going back to Mexico, to save money and get ready for next time. I’m already here. I cannot go back. I went through a lot just to get here.”
He watched migrants from Cuba and Nicaragua standing in a line along the towering border wall, waiting to enter the United States with what he described as what he described. These countries are among those whose citizens are exempt from the public health rule, as they do not have an agreement with the United States to accept deportation flights and Mexico will not take them back.
“I want to be in that line,” Hernandez said. “It’s not fair that Title 42 allows some people to go in and others to stay.”
At the southern end of the border, near the Gulf of Mexico, local officials in Matamoros, Mexico, said about 4,000 migrants, mostly Venezuelans, had gathered at an outdoor camp a few blocks from the border. . Many people are waiting for the end of Title 42 so they can enter the United States and apply for asylum.
Erika Moreno, 28, who arrived with her 2-year-old son from Venezuela, had been staying at a makeshift shelter in the city but could only stay for a month and will soon have to go to camp. “We waited and waited,” she said. “There are a lot of rumours, and most of us depend on the information we see on the internet.”
The increase in migrants to El Paso has not reduced the number to and around Eagle Pass, nearly 500 miles away. Currently, about 1,500 people have flocked to Eagle Pass each day, a city of about 28,000 people, a city official said, often overwhelming local resources and leaving a single hospital overwhelmed.
“It’s already oversaturated,” said Ivan A. Morua, acting city manager. He said the city expects to double or even triple its current arrivals when Title 42 ends.
Mr. Morua said he was also preparing for a more immediate crisis: how to provide shelter to those who need it when a strong cold front sweeps across the border area over the weekend. He said city officials are considering creating separate, temporary shelters for locals and migrants, even bringing people into the administrative center.
The city is at the center of Governor Greg Abbott’s nearly two-year, multi-billion dollar effort to strengthen law enforcement along the border, known as Operation Lonely Star. But neither the wall of containers between the international bridges at Eagle Pass, nor the chain-link fence that zigzags for miles along the riverbank — both of which are located there by the Texas National Guard — doesn’t seem to have changed. change the speed of the people coming.
A broken state fence could be seen along with a pile of discarded clothes and trash, a sign that a large number of people had recently crossed. “You can see the clothes along the water,” said Lieutenant Donny Kindred, a helicopter pilot with the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Migrants discovered from a helicopter Wednesday afternoon on the outskirts of Eagle Pass appear to be seeking to turn themselves over to Border Patrol, the first step towards seeking asylum. At one location, a group of more than a dozen people gathered next to a National Guard vehicle. In another scene, three people walking along a farm road, seemingly looking for someone to surrender, are followed by three cattle heads.
The helicopter circled a site where migrants trying to escape authorities appeared to have been hiding among low trees and mesquite trees, leaving behind a backpack and other belongings. It flew over a highway that was once a popular route for smugglers and for state soldiers pursuing them at high speed.
“There were several pursuits this morning,” said Lieutenant Kindred. “It was too much to bear.”
Eileen Sullivan Contribution reports from Washington and Steve Fisher from Matamoros, Mexico.
