Bustle, but not chaos, at the US border as pandemic restrictions end

The United States’ southern border was full of migrants, but not chaotic, on Friday after the lifting of pandemic-era restrictions on Title 42. Still, Biden administration officials lashed out at judicial challenges from the right and left that they said could put the could undermine efforts to address the record number of border crossings in the coming days and weeks.

Migrants continued to seek refuge in the United States in numerous pockets across the 2,000-mile border with Mexico, though U.S. Border Patrol officials and shelter managers said the stream of desperate people was lighter than they had feared given the number of people who traveled in recent years. weeks from their homes to the north.

Even as they expressed relief at Friday’s lower-than-expected increase, government officials boiled over court rulings they predicted would hamper their ability to handle the latest surge in arrivals and lead to dangerous overcrowding at already stalled border facilities.

Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, criticized a late Thursday ruling by a Florida federal judge that barred the department from releasing migrants without a notice to appear in immigration court, something he said was routinely done by previous administrations to speed up the process and curb overcrowding. The ruling came at the request of the Republican attorney general of Florida, who argued that the government cannot simply let the migrants into the country without a warrant to appear in court.

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, called the ruling “sabotage, pure and simple.”

Officials also criticized human rights groups, which filed a lawsuit just after midnight against a new rule from the Biden administration limiting who is eligible for asylum. Migrant rights activists dubbed the new rule the “Biden-Harris Asylum Ban” on Friday, saying it was patently illegal. But officials said the court battles would only make the situation at the border worse.

“The lawsuits we face on both sides of the aisle really show how fundamentally broken our immigration system is,” said Blas Nuñez-Neto, the assistant secretary for border and immigration policy in the Department of Homeland Security.

In Washington, a bipartisan group of House lawmakers tried to offer a compromise solution by introducing a bill Friday to extend the government’s power to immediately deport migrants who tried to enter the country illegally by two years, just as during the pandemic.

But the bill, led by Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Jared Golden, Democrat of Maine, has little chance of becoming law. It has already been criticized by some Democrats as too draconian and by some Republicans for doing too little to deter migrants from filing what they consider frivolous asylum claims.

Along the border on Friday, there were few scenes of large or unruly crowds at the usual border crossings.

But commenting to reporters on Friday morning, several top officials said they continue to expect record levels of border crossings in what they called a “difficult transition” that could stretch well into the summer months.

About 10,000 people crossed the border on Thursday, an all-time high that strained the government’s network of border patrol facilities as well as the shelters of cities, nonprofits and churches.

According to internal data obtained by The New York Times, the Border Patrol detained more than 24,000 migrants as of early Friday morning. That’s more than a typical day in November last year, when there were 12,000 migrants in border police custody and well above the agency’s maximum capacity of between 18,000 and 20,000.

In McAllen, Texas, the surge many expected did not materialize at the McAllen-Hidalgo International Bridge, where Customs and Border Patrol agents were handling a small line of people entering the United States from Reynosa, Mexico, many of them regular border crossings.

The first group to surrender to authorities and seek asylum — a mix of men, women and young children — reached the port of entry minutes after Title 42 expired. A line of Texas State Police trucks halted a block away from the International Bridge.

In El Paso, dozens of migrants had gathered around the Sacred Heart Church, a rest home that was overrun by some 2,000 migrants earlier this week. On Friday, some kicked a football back and forth, others sat with their backs against a wall, surrounded by Red Cross blankets and plastic bags of food.

Shelter operators said the population under their care was dwindling on Friday, but it was too early to say what would happen in the coming days as most of the people crossing over were still being processed. But some predicted that the worst may be over.

“The number of people picked up from the river levee on the other side of the wall yesterday was significant, but not nearly what everyone expected,” said Ruben Garcia, the director of the Annunciation House organization, which coordinates with U.S. Border Patrol for care for migrants in a network of shelters in the El Paso area.

“We’ll have to see what happens in the next few days,” he said. “There are a lot of variables.”

Despite the relative calm, officials said the situation on both sides of the border remains difficult with tens of thousands of migrants already entering or heading to the United States. Economic and political crises in countries in the region are causing people to flee their countries in a mass migration that experts say will involve as many as 20 million internally displaced people across the hemisphere. Migration is already straining refugee services across the region, and especially in the United States.

Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard gave an optimistic characterization of the situation on Friday morning, saying the border is “calm and normal, with no major arrivals or conflict.”

But weather forecasters predicted some heavy rain along the border over the weekend, with isolated pockets of up to 10 inches that could lead to flooding along the Rio Grande, which many of the migrants are trying to cross. Some of these storms could also bring hail and damaging winds, and tornadoes on Saturday were also possible, forecasters said.

Specifically, they said there was a potential for flooding along the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass to Laredo, Texas, reaching levels not seen along that stretch of the river in years.

While Friday’s focus was on the immediate flow of migrants at the border, migrant advocates and officials in Washington engaged in a heated debate over what longer-term immigration policies should be pursued.

On Friday afternoon, several human rights groups demanded that the Biden administration stop enforcing its new asylum rule, which assumes that most migrants entering the United States through Mexico are ineligible for asylum if they do not cross official ports of entry.

Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, compared the policy to that of former President Donald J. Trump and said the new policy violates international human rights conventions.

“The administration made a conscious choice to severely limit access to our nation’s asylum system, doubling down on and building on Trump policies that run counter to core American values,” she said. “Lives are at stake. The administration needs to be better.”

Biden administration officials vehemently defended their approach, saying tougher measures were needed in the face of massive migratory flows across the hemisphere.

Mr Mayorkas said the government had been preparing for years for the end of the Title 42 restrictions, and he expressed confidence that new policies – including more legal roads for migrants and harsh new consequences for those trying to cross illegally – ultimately, would reduce the number of people trying to enter the United States without authorization.

“We continue to communicate to migrants that this is not the way to seek help in the United States,” he told ABC News. “It’s extremely dangerous. They are in the hands of ruthless smugglers. We have built legal, safe and orderly roads for them to get to the United States. They will face severe consequences if they arrive irregularly at our border.”

Still, Mr Mayorkas said it would take time for those efforts to work.

“It will be a challenge, but we have a plan,” he said. “We have executed our plan. It will take time, but we are confident that our plan will work.”

Reporting contributed by Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs in Edisto Beach, SC, Edgar Sandoval in McAllen, Texas, Emiliano Rodriguez Mega in Ciudad Juarez, Miriam Jordan in El Paso, and Karun Demirjian in Washington.