NY.- President Biden’s tenure has coincided with a global increase in migration, and the pressure has been felt sharply on the southern border of the United States.
Officials have caught migrants crossing the border without authorization more than five million times from February 2021 to March this year, according to the most recent information available — the highest number of arrests in decades.
Officials expect a larger number of people after the Biden administration ends the health emergency rule, known as Title 42, which has been used millions of times to quickly expel migrants.
Some 660,000 migrants were waiting in Mexico earlier this month and are determined to cross into the United States in the coming days or weeks, according to a Department of Homeland Security intelligence analysis obtained by The New York Times.
Migrants continue to travel north from Central America.
On Tuesday, border officials apprehended more than 11,000 migrants who crossed illegally, according to internal information, an increase from more than 7,000 to 8,000 crossings a day over the past week.
Raúl L. Ortíz, head of the Border Patrol, estimated this Wednesday that there are 60,000 to 65,000 migrants waiting along the northern border of Mexico.
The US border and immigration system is not equipped to handle that many people. Although the illegal crossing to the United States has become the only option for many, because there are very few legal ways.
Most US refugee, asylum seeker, and immigrant laws date from the 1980s and 1990s. None have been significantly updated to accommodate modern challenges.
For example, the visa limits that allow people to work in the United States are based on the size of the economy in the 1990s.
Those limits have remained largely the same, even as the economy has more than doubled.
In addition, the facilities at the border were designed to incarcerate Mexicans who crossed illegally in search of work. The government has recognized that they are not safe to hold children and other vulnerable populations.
Laws at the border were designed largely for migrants trying to avoid capture by authorities, not for thousands of people fleeing humanitarian crises who voluntarily turn themselves in to agents when they arrive at the border, hoping to claim asylum. .
