Barring a last-minute legal challenge, the Trump-era policy known as Title 42 will expire at 11:59 p.m. Eastern on Thursday. It was launched three years ago under the premise of preventing the spread of Covid-19.
Border agents, state and local officials, and even top advisers to President Biden in Washington are bracing for the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants in the coming days. People have already begun crossing into US border cities, anticipating the end of Title 42, which since 2020 has allowed the government to quickly expel citizens of various countries back into Mexico.
Three Texas cities — Brownsville, Laredo and El Paso — have declared states of emergency. Outside Sacred Heart Catholic Church in downtown El Paso last week, a picture of human misery stretched for several blocks, with destitute immigrants occupying every corner of the sidewalk.
In just a few days, the number has skyrocketed to about 2,000 people, and more keep coming. Families sleep in cardboard boxes at night, putting sheets on the fences to create shade during the day. Able men are begging for money to ride the bus to Houston, Denver and Orlando, where they say jobs await them; small children roam the alleys looking for food and begging.
“It’s a real crisis,” Father Rafael Garcia said, looking out at the crowd that stretched out in all directions. “If this is now, what will it be like after May 11? How is this going to play out?”
That question is at the center of a monumental challenge with a grim history. When the pandemic-inspired restrictions end, border officials will resume an immigration system that has largely failed for decades, but with the added pressure of three years of pent-up lawsuit. About 35,000 migrants are piling up in Ciudad Juárez, another 15,000 in Tijuana and thousands more elsewhere on the Mexican side of the border.
