Title 42 ends: Mayorkas says Border Patrol experienced ‘50% drop’ in migrant encounters
Ryan King
Video Embed
Border Patrol has experienced a 50% drop in encounters over the past two days, according to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Fears of a surge reached a fever pitch ahead of Title 42‘s end last Thursday, as border towns braced for the worst on Friday and anticipated a large influx of migrants crossing the border. Mayorkas indicated that it was still early to tell whether the influx has peaked.
BIDEN SAYS DEBT LIMIT TALKS ARE ‘MOVING ALONG’ BUT ‘NOT THERE YET’
“Over the past two days, the United States Border Patrol has experienced a 50% drop in the number of encounters versus what we were experiencing earlier in the week,” Mayorkas told CNN’s State of the Union. “It is still early; we are in day three.”
“We have seen, I think, approximately 6,300 on Friday, and about 4,200 yesterday by the United States Border Patrol, and we saw over 10,000 before the end of Title 42 earlier last week,” he added.
A senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection official at the agency’s Washington headquarters previously told the Washington Examiner that 9,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended on Thursday alone.
Title 42 is a public health order issued around the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that grants Border Patrol the authority to rapidly expel migrants from the border without an asylum hearing. The administration moved to end the policy as it seeks to turn the page on the pandemic.
Mayorkas and President Joe Biden received criticisms from Republicans and Democrats alike, but the secretary argued that DHS took steps to prepare for the fallout of Title 42’s demise.
“We have been planning for months and months — over a year and a half. We have surged resources, asylum officers, Border Patrol agents, processing coordinators to do the data entry work, so our Border Patrol agents can be out in the field. We’ve expanded our holding capacity,” he said.
Mayorkas also underscored the importance of the Biden administration’s messaging to potential illegal immigrants.
“We have communicated very clearly, a vitally important message,” he added. “There is a lawful, safe, and orderly way to arrive in the United States that is through the pathways that President Biden has expanded in an unprecedented way. And then there’s a consequence if one does not use those lawful pathways.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz recently told reporters that he doesn’t anticipate arrests to be as high as 18,000, as some experts were suggesting.
“The increases that we’ve seen in the last five to six days, I think, were really the surge. I don’t — after May 11 — I don’t expect us to have 17[,000]-18,000 apprehensions like some predicted,” Ortiz said.