Title 42 ending: Texas governor announces border force to ‘repel’ illegal immigrants
Kaelan Deese
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Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) designated National Guard troops on Monday to a newly formed state border force and called on them to “repel” immigrants who are expected to cross illegally into the U.S. in record numbers in the coming weeks.
The Lone Star State governor, who has been critical of President Joe Biden’s decision to end the Title 42 border policy this week, said members of the “Texas Tactical Border Force,” a special National Guard unit, were being loaded into Black Hawk helicopters for deployment.
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“They will be deployed to hot spots along the border to intercept, repel, and to turn back migrants who are trying to enter Texas illegally,” Abbott said at a news conference.
Abbott said a similar strategy was conducted in December in El Paso. In more recent days, the National Guard identified and suppressed a surge near Brownsville, which borders the Mexican town of Matamoros and is near where a person drove into a group of people on Sunday.
The goal of the team will be to identify any crossing points along the Rio Grande and shut them down upon discovery. They will have access to aircraft, boats, riot gear, and night vision equipment.
Title 42 is a policy coming to an end on Thursday evening that allows border agents to expel immigrants to Mexico rapidly. The policy was first implemented in March 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic to prevent the coronavirus from spreading in crowded detention centers.
The Department of Homeland Security said it expects up to 13,000 crossings per day, nearly twice the rate that came in March.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is sending 1,500 active-duty soldiers and Marines to the border. Abbott contends federal troops are only going to be “doing paperwork” and processing illegal immigrants for “catch and release” rather than turning people away on the front lines.
“They’re not going to actually be on the border, trying to secure the border. The goal of the president is not to stop people from coming across the border illegally,” Abbott said of Biden’s policies.
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The administration has said it plans to use powers provided under Title 8 after the expiration of the pandemic-era policy. Those powers include allowing illegal immigrants to be punished in such a way that will render them ineligible to come to the country legally.
Title 42 is expiring on Thursday at 11:59 p.m. CDT. Border agents could encounter 10,000 or more immigrants each day after the policy lifts the end of the health emergency order.