Set to expire on Thursday, May 11, Title 42 was originally instituted to help stop the spread of COVID-19 over the southern U.S. border. As those concerns diminished, however, the order continued to allow authorities to send illegal migrants at the border back into Mexico.
How did a COVID-era regulation turn into a key method to curtail the growing crisis at the border? And what does it mean for the border when the Biden administration ends the COVID public health emergency nationally?
Title 42 By the Numbers
Title 42 has never been applied to all migrants attempting to cross into the U.S. – in fact, it has only been applied in about one-third of migrant cases processed at the border. According to Simon Hankinson, senior research fellow at the Border Security and Immigration Center, in fiscal year 2021 DHS expelled 1,071,075 migrants under Title 42. In fiscal year 2022, they bounced 1,103,966.
Since last October, 444,146 people – 90% of them single adults from Mexico and Central America – have been expelled under Title 42.
Border agents told the New York Times that using Title 42 to expel a migrant takes about 10 minutes. Other existing border policies, by contrast, take over an hour per person, leading to terrible overcrowding. So if a station must process 100 migrants, Title 42 cuts that time down from almost five days to just under 17 hours.
What’s Next
The scheduled demise of Title 42 is merely the final blow to the measure: The Biden administration has been diminishing its effectiveness for over two years by making exceptions. Today, for example, the measure cannot be applied to family groups, or to anyone originating from Venezuela, Cuba, or Nicaragua.
The Biden administration has been gearing up for a surge of migrants when Title 42 expires. Last week, the administration announced that it was sending 1,500 National Guard troops to bolster the 2,500 already present at checkpoints along the Texas border.
According to the New York Times, the federal government is predicting a surge from about 7,000 migrants per day to 13,000. Other sources, however, put the numbers higher: border cities should anticipate a surge from 9,000 daily to 18,000.
Processing that once took minutes will now take hours, leading to much longer stays in holding facilities for those who make it across the border. Those who continue waiting to cross, including family groups with women and children, will be left for days in long lines exposed to the desert elements, or in dangerous Mexican border cities where they will more easily fall prey to violent cartels.
Call It ‘Asylum’
The Biden administration’s philosophy to date has been that almost every person crossing the border has the right to enter the country and make an asylum claim. Other than the third of migrants from Mexico expelled under Title 42, the going directive is to “catch and release” arrested migrants after scheduling an asylum hearing and admonishing them to make sure they show up.
There is a backlog of 1.5 million asylum cases in the immigration system, with thousands more added monthly. Some migrants released today won’t get their first appointment for a removal hearing until 2033.
Even prior to Title 42’s expiration, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, the monthly average of “inadmissible alien encounters” at the border has surged by 258%. Many of the migrants have been mass-paroled under the asylum system.
The Biden administration has been unable to stay in contact with many of those released into the country, including over 85,000 unaccompanied migrant children.
In the summer of 2021, investigators showed that the government had also lost track of approximately 150,000 adult illegal migrants over a three-month period.
‘The Border is Closed’
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has resisted criticisms of the Biden administration’s preparations for the upcoming surge in migrants. He blamed the surge on smugglers and “disinformation” about the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border:
We do expect that encounters at our southern border will increase as smugglers are seeking to take advantage of this change and already are hard at work spreading disinformation that the border will be open after that. High encounters will place a strain on our entire system, including our dedicated and heroic workforce and our communities.
“Let me be clear,” he stated. “Our border is not open and will not be open after May 11.”
On May 1, the U.S. Border Patrol announced that over 73,000 migrants had crossed the border in 10 days. They also estimated that 17,000 individuals crossed the border undetected.
