The US government is to mobilize 24,000 agents to station them at the border with Mexico. They are being deployed due to an expected increase in the number of migrants who will cross the border when emergency measure Title 42 comes to an end at 23:59 (local time) on Thursday.
This measure was instituted at the height of the corona pandemic by the administration of President Donald Trump and maintained by the administration of his successor Joe Biden. Title 42 invokes the protection of national public health and allows authorities to return migrants who have crossed the border. For example, the spread of the corona virus had to be prevented. In three years, Titel 42 has been used about 2.8 million times. Millions of people have been sent back to Mexico without being able to apply for asylum in the US.
The expiration of Title 42 is feared by the border states, because they fear that there will be a run on the border. To help local authorities, the government on Wednesday announced the deployment of “more than 24,000 officers and law enforcement officers, as well as more than 1,100 coordinators” of the Border Police. At the beginning of May, 1,400 military personnel were already deployed by the Ministry of Defense to reinforce the 2,500 National Guard troops already stationed along the border to help customs.
Customs expects that 10,000 migrants will cross the border into Mexico every day if the emergency measure ends in the night from Thursday to Friday. That is double the average in March. In April, the number of people crossing the border in the southern US has already increased sharply.
New restrictions
Meanwhile, the US has introduced new restrictions on asylum applications. They were announced in February and will come into effect on Thursday night. Before asylum seekers can report to the border, they must now have been given an appointment via a telephone request.
If asylum seekers do not meet this condition, their application will be automatically rejected and they may be subject to an expedited deportation procedure, barring them from entering the US for five years. This condition does not apply to unaccompanied minors; they are allowed into the country anyway.
The US also plans to set up regional asylum centers in Colombia and Guatemala. The centers assess migrants’ eligibility for asylum and other humanitarian and labor pathways in the US. The centers are supposed to ease the workload of US Customs on the southern border.
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