WASHINGTON — Border crossings on the southwestern border have peaked again in recent weeks, and homeland security officials are bracing for those numbers to be much higher if the Biden administration decides to lift a public health order restricting immigration during the pandemic .
A decision on the order, passed two years ago by the Trump administration this month, could come as early as Wednesday, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can decide whether to extend it for another 60 days.
Homeland security officials Tuesday outlined emergency plans to manage as many as 18,000 encounters a day at the border, regardless of the cause. In conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, other federal agencies, and state and local officials, the department stands ready to provide additional personnel, transportation and medical assistance, and temporary facilities to process migrants.
Much is at stake, both from a humanitarian and political point of view. Democrats don’t want the southwestern border to seem out of control in the months leading up to the midterm elections, which would lead to more Republican attacks on the Biden administration’s border policies.
The government was caught a little flat-footed last September as thousands of migrants massively crossed the Rio Grande into Del Rio, Texas, and were forced to crowd under a bridge for days until they could be processed by border officials. It’s that kind of situation that officials try to avoid.
Read more about US immigration
There has long been concern that lifting the public health order, which gives border officials the power to expel migrants quickly, including asylum seekers, will open a floodgate of illegal migration. Some government officials, under pressure from immigration attorneys, had hoped that the injunction, known as Title 42, could be lifted when seasonal migration trends waned — but that never actually happened.
Border officials have detained 900,000 undocumented migrants at the southwestern border since October, the Homeland Security Department said Tuesday. During fiscal year 2021, undocumented migrants were caught a staggering 1.7 million times. The number of illegal crossings rose significantly after President Biden took office compared to the previous year, when the number fell, partly as a result of the pandemic.
The Biden administration has defended the continued use of the injunction, citing the CDC’s assessment that its lifting would pose a public health threat during the pandemic. Public health experts have long said the argument was misleading, and the government has never provided scientific evidence that limiting illegal migration on the southwestern border has helped curb the spread of Covid-19.
Instead, critics say, the public health order has been used as an immigration control tool.
Human Rights First, a national advocacy group, recently released a report finding that public health evictions on the southwestern border had led to nearly 10,000 reports of violent attacks on migrants, including kidnapping, torture and rape.
Julia Neusner, a lawyer with Human Rights First, said that if the injunction were lifted, the group would send lawyers and investigators to the border “to verify that the policy is effectively ending for asylum seekers of all races and nationalities, and to make improvements.” to ensure that our system actually welcomes people seeking refuge.”
Nonprofits that help migrants released from the country by border officials are also preparing for an increase in crossings.
There have been 1.7 million public health evictions. Traci Feit Love, the executive director of Project Corazon, a nonprofit that helps asylum seekers crossing the border into Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, said this meant a significant number of refugees were waiting outside the United States to apply for asylum. . †
Project Corazon has in the past tapped into a network of pro bono attorneys to assist its staff attorneys with cases. “We will need to gather the necessary resources to ensure that everyone gets the guidance and support they deserve,” she said.
When two homeland security officials spoke to reporters in the background on Tuesday about preparations for more migration, they made no mention of concerns about migrants spreading Covid-19.
The government this week started vaccinating undocumented migrants on the southwestern border who are not deported under the public health ordinance. It has allowed thousands of migrant children, families and even single adults into the country despite the order, for humanitarian reasons and due to limited detention capacity.
In September, border officials allowed many of the families who arrived in Del Rio to enter the country for humanitarian deportation proceedings, but they also displaced thousands on flights back to Haiti, where political unrest and violence have resulted in extremely difficult living conditions.
According to internal data shared with DailyExpertNews, there has been a 300 percent increase in undocumented Cubans caught crossing the southwestern border in the past three months. Large numbers of Venezuelans and Nicaraguans have also arrived.
But the United States cannot put Cubans, Venezuelans or Nicaraguans on flights back to their countries because of a lack of diplomatic relations. One of the homeland security officials speaking in the background on Tuesday called the situation “problematic” and said they were most likely fleeing oppressive governments.
As a result, thousands of undocumented migrants from those countries have been let into the country, were given a recording device and told to report to Immigration and Customs to complete the paperwork so that they can undergo deportation procedures, a process that takes years. because of the backlog in immigration courts.
A homeland security official also said many migrants had been placed in an “accelerated removal” procedure, which is a fast track to deportation for migrants who are not afraid to return to their countries. Separately, some asylum-seeking migrants are led into a program in which they wait in Mexico for an immigration judge to rule on their case.
Miriam Jordan contributed reporting from Los Angeles.