Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas acknowledged Tuesday that the conditions along the southern border will deteriorate next month when the government’s Title 42 pandemic authority to immediately expel illegal border crossers disappears, but told a congressional hearing that his department is working to adapt to the change conditions.
Mr. Mayorkas did not offer specific numbers on border traffic, but a projection last year, ahead of a previous deadline for ending Title 42, said that as many as 18,000 illegal immigrants could cross per day.
That would be nearly triple the amount that arrived each day in March.
“We do anticipate a surge in the number of encounters,” Mr. Mayorkas told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Title 42 is the public health law invoked by the Trump administration at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — and retained by the Biden administration — that allows U.S. border agents to deny individuals entrance into the country in order to “prevent [the] spread of communicable disease.”
via joemiller
