The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is preparing to welcome up to 18,000 migrants a day in the coming weeks, but is also preparing for a smaller increase of 12,000 arrivals a day or similar arrivals at current levels, an official said. from the agency in a call Tuesday with reporters, requesting anonymity to discuss internal matters.
The official did not provide the current number of migrant encounters at the border each day. By mid-March, about 5,000 migrants were arriving on average per day, two separate US government sources told Reuters at the time.
Another DHS official on the same call said he was unsure whether lifting the COVID-era order would increase migration, but preparations were underway anyway.
U.S. health officials have a deadline this week to renew, modify, or terminate the COVID-19 health order known as Title 42. The order was implemented in March 2020 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under the administration of former Republican President Donald Trump to limit the spread of the virus. US President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has so far kept him in place.
Under Title 42, US border agents can “deport” migrants to Mexico within hours or quickly send them to other countries without the possibility of seeking asylum in the United States.
Health experts, immigrant rights advocates and leading Democrats argue that this policy illegally cuts off access to asylum and puts migrants at risk in Mexico, and that scientific evidence does not support its stated aim to help curb the spread of the virus. They castigated Mr Biden for keeping the policy in place despite his promises to reverse Mr Trump’s most restrictive immigration policies.
Republicans across the country have made rising illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border a major line of attack ahead of the Nov. 8 legislative election, where Democrats risk losing control of Congress, which would hamper Biden’s legislative agenda.
Reuters reported earlier this month that Biden officials were leaning toward ending the order after court rulings made it difficult to use and U.S. health officials moved to ease pandemic restrictions more broadly. the national scale. DHS said Monday it has begun administering COVID-19 vaccines to migrants in border detention.
The Biden administration has said the decision to lift the order rests with the CDC, which declined to comment.
FDRAL STAFFING INCREASE
DHS officials told Congressional offices earlier this month that tens of thousands of migrants who are already near the border could arrive within hours of the lifting of Title 42 and that more than one million migrants from southern Mexico and other countries could arrive in the coming weeks, according to an aide briefed on the matter.
DHS did not respond to a request for comment on these estimates.
The planning effort involves building additional temporary detention facilities along the border, some of which will be ready for use in early April, one of the DHS officials said during Tuesday’s call. DHS is also working to add personnel and transportation, in an effort that involves several federal agencies that work with immigrants, the person said.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), an emergency agency that usually responds to floods, storms and other major disasters, is helping with the planning effort, though the administration has not officially issued a declaration of disaster.
DHS is working on a system that would allow migrants seeking asylum to register electronically and schedule a time to approach a legal port of entry as part of a “more orderly process,” it said. one of the DHS officials.
Some asylum seekers have been stuck in Mexico for months waiting for restrictions to be lifted. Reuters interviewed five LGBTQ asylum seekers from Jamaica stranded in Tijuana, Mexico, in recent weeks. Some of them said they resorted to prostitution because they could not work legally and were discriminated against in Mexico.