Border Crisis: Up to 40,000 Migrants Amass on Mexican Side, Raising Concerns of Chaos at US Border When Title 42 Ends Next Month
Law enforcement sources have revealed to The Post that up to 40,000 migrants have amassed on the Mexican side of the border, with concerns that the chaos they could cause when Title 42 ends next month is growing. Many migrants in Juarez, Mexico, are tired of waiting or being duped by internet scams into thinking they will be given asylum in the US, leading to hundreds of people crossing into El Paso and surrendering to border agents daily.
“We have intel that there’s between 10,000 and 40,000 people waiting to cross over,” a police official who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Post. The official went on to say, “We know something is coming, and we’re always preparing for what if a couple thousand of those people waiting there just get antsy or they’re like, ‘Today is the day.’”
Wednesday saw over 750 migrants surrender to Border Patrol agents in one massive group, with additional surrenders continuing into Thursday, making the tasks of processing and ejecting them a monumental job for Border Patrol. Since late March, migrant groups as large as 1,000 people have been turning themselves in to officials in Texas’ sixth-largest city, fueled by fake information spread on social media by drug cartels who prefer them to pay to be smuggled over the border.
“The cartels don’t make any money by migrants sitting around waiting for the CBP One appointment,” another source told The Post, explaining that the CBP One app is the legal way for migrants to claim asylum. US border officials have launched a social media campaign to correct the false information.
Due to the sheer numbers, Customs and Border Protection has been flying migrants from El Paso to other areas of the border, such as Laredo and San Diego, to process and eject them. This helps keep Border Patrol facilities in El Paso from being overrun and allows for more migrants to be returned to Mexico. Migrants who cannot be expelled to Mexico are being deported back to their home country to keep them from attempting to cross into the US again, border sources told The Post.
Border Patrol officials expect more large groups to “episodically” show up at the border barrier in El Paso until May 11, when Title 42 is expected to end. The pandemic-era policy put in place by former President Donald Trump allows the Border Patrol to quickly expel millions of migrants from certain countries to Mexico without allowing them to seek asylum in America. Currently, Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans, Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Hondurans, and Mexicans are subject to Title 42.
The Biden administration has proposed a new immigration rule that would require asylum-seekers to apply for protection in any country they travel through before they arrive in the US. The rule is expected to take effect in May and to last two years. With so much confusion and changing laws, frantic migrants could storm any of the city’s multiple international bridges, a situation which has occurred twice since March. US authorities have been forced to shut down the Paso Del Norte Bridge, most recently on Monday. Customs and Border Protection used concrete barriers, razor wire, and a special border SWAT team to keep migrants from pouring over to the US side.
El Paso has been reinforced by hundreds of state troopers and Texas National Guard members since December when the city declared a state of emergency over the border crisis. Some desperate migrants have started turning to criminal smugglers to get past the beefed-up security and sneak across the border — going through dangerous sewage tunnels, hiking through border mountains, or climbing over the 9-foot border barrier. Those who successfully make it face even more peril in the hands of cartels — who often lock migrants in stifling vehicles, keep them inside stash houses in “deplorable conditions.”
Source: New York Post
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