In anticipation of Title 42 being lifted, more than 60,000 migrants have reportedly gathered in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, Texas.
“And we can only imagine it extending even further,” El Paso Deputy City Manager Mario D’Agostino told the El Paso City Council on May 23.
A little more than a month ago, D’Agostino estimated that around 15,000 migrants were waiting in Ciudad Juárez. He claims to be kept up to speed on the number by state and federal officials.
Title 42 is a public health emergency order that enables the swift expulsion of migrants at United States borders to stop the spread of COVID-19. The Biden administration had planned to lift the order on May 23, but a federal judge halted the move.
The administration disagreed with the federal district court’s ruling, saying “the authority to set public health policy nationally should rest with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), not with a single district court.”
In the May 23 meeting of the El Paso City Council, members discussed the possibility of invoking local emergency powers to increase capacity for shelter, food, and transport, to deal with the expected inflow of unlawful and lawful migrants into the city.
The meeting came after Border Patrol apprehended more than 1,200 unlawful migrants on May 14 and was forced to release 119 of them at a charter bus station because of space constraints.
“Busy times! Just today, [El Paso USBP] (U.S. Border Patrol) agents have encountered over 1,200 migrants & counting entering the border illegally,” El Paso Sector Border Patrol Chief Gloria Chavez wrote on Twitter on May 14. “Haitians, Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Turkish nationals to name a few.”
According to the City of El Paso’s emergency management coordinator chief, Jorge Rodriguez, the Border Patrol agents drop off between 400 to 500 unlawful migrants every day at regional nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which subsequently aid them with food, shelter, and transportation out of El Paso.
“If and when Title 42 … is eliminated, we can anticipate that the numbers that we are seeing now — which is about 400 to 500 per day, conservatively speaking — will double to at least 1,000 per day,” Rodriguez said. “Almost zero percent of migrants remain in El Paso. The choice of travel — which has changed from what we saw in 2019 — is primarily through the airlines.”
If buses and airplanes are full, they are forced to stay in the city for 24 to 48 hours, straining the city’s and NGOs’ resources, according to D’Agostino.
Border Patrol officials in the El Paso region apprehended more than 94,000 unlawful migrants in the first four months of 2022, a rise from 63,000 last year.
