Washington: Thousands of American troops are being deployed along the US-Mexico border, facing a chaotic surge of migrants as Title 42, a public health policy that allowed the swift expulsion migrants during the Covid-19 pandemic, is set to come to an end on Thursday.
The Title 42 policy, introduced in March 2020 by the administration of former President Donald Trump, will end at 11.59 p.m. on Thursday, reports Xinhua news agency.
Under the policy, US authorities turned back would-be migrants — including those seeking humanitarian asylum — attempting to cross the border from Mexico more than 2.5 million times using the Covid-19 pandemic as justification.
About 2,500 US National Guard troops have already been at the country’s southern border.
The White House has said another 1,500 troops will be sent there before the end of this month, making the .S military presence at the border to a total of 4,000 personnel.
The first set of new troops, about 550 personnel, headed to El Paso, Texas, on Wednesday, local media reported.
Texas Governor Greg Abbottalso announced this week that hundreds of Texas National Guard soldiers, equipped with Black Hawk helicopters and C-130s, are being deployed to a number of hot spots along the Rio Grande.
A number of Texas border cities including El Paso and Brownsville, among the hot spots, have recently issued disaster declarations so as to tap into more resources to manage the influx of migrants.
Online videos from the border show hundreds of migrants, including many children, waiting in line along the banks of the Rio Grande to seek asylum in the US.
In Brownsville alone, where a SUV rammed into a crowd outside a migrants centre on Sunday killing eight and injuring more than 10 others, some 7,000 migrants had been in custody.
More than 10,000 migrants were caught crossing at the US-Mexico border illegally each day on Monday and Tuesday, according to Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council.
On Wednesday, the Mexican government had said that the US expelled 2,825,970 people expelled at its border crossings in over the three years under Title 42.
In a statement, Mexico’s Interior Ministry saod the vast majority were deported (2,710,494), with six out of 10 being Mexican nationals (1,641,746).
The bulk of the remaining migrants deported at the southern border came from countries including Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.
Meanwhile, the ripple has been felt across the US.
In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul issued an executive order on Tuesday, allowing cities and the state to tap into more resources for new migrants.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, when announcing an emergency declaration, said resources of the third largest U.S. city are now stretched to “the breaking point” and existing facilities are “full”.
While mobilizing troops, President Joe Biden’s administration has also prepared new restrictions for migrants crossing the border, rolling out a regulation on Wednesday that presumes most migrants are ineligible for asylum if they had travelled through another country without seeking protection elsewhere first or if they failed to enter the US lawfully.
Migrants violating the new rule could be deported and barred from the US for five years, said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The Biden administration will also open the first “regional processing centres” among about 100 planned, in Colombia and Guatemala so as to direct migrants to legal pathways finally leading into the US.
The end of Title 42 “does not mean our border is open”, Mayorkas argued on Wednesday, criticizing Congress for failing to repair “a broken immigration system”.
“Even after nearly two years of preparation, we expect to see large numbers of encounters at our southern border in the days and weeks after May 11,” he said.
“It’s going to be chaotic for a while,” Biden addressed the border situation on Tuesday, referring to the expected surge of migrants as the restriction policy ends.
–IANS
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