Title 42 ends: Biden administration has no plans to deploy more troops to border
Anna Giaritelli
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EL PASO, Texas — The Biden administration has no plans to send additional active-duty troops down to the U.S.-Mexico border, despite entering into uncharted territory in which an overwhelmed Border Patrol has no way to turn away illegal immigrants immediately.
A senior Department of Defense official on Friday said it had not received any new requests from Border Patrol’s overseer, the Department of Homeland Security, beyond the 1,500 troops that had already been authorized.
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“DOD sends troops to the border in response to requests for assistance that come from DHS,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Rebecca Zimmerman said in a telebriefing with reporters. “At this particular time, we are fulfilling all of the active requests that we have now. And we have not received any additional requests for troops to come down to the border this year.”
DHS officials are breathing a sigh of relief after planning for two years on how to end the pandemic public health policy, Title 42, and switching to Title 8 protocols overnight.
President Joe Biden had warned earlier in the week that transitioning from expelling illegal immigrants to taking them into custody would make operations “chaotic for a while,” but the initial flip in procedures last night was easier than anticipated, according to a senior DHS official.
“We continue to encounter high levels of noncitizens at the border, but we did not see a substantial increase overnight or an influx at midnight,” Blas Nunez-Neto, DHS assistant secretary for border and immigration policy, told reporters on the call. “It is still early, however, and our focus remains the same: processing people safely and humanely but now with additional tools for us to deliver consequences quickly.”
A senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection official at the agency’s Washington headquarters told the Washington Examiner in a phone call Friday that the number of illegal immigrants apprehended nationwide remained very high, with 9,000 on Thursday alone.
Border Patrol agents stationed in Ajo, Arizona, have arrested approximately 700 people who crossed as a group in the past 24 hours, according to the CBP official, who disclosed data on the condition of anonymity.
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For now, the Mexican cartels that profit from smuggling people into the U.S. may be waiting to see what, if any, change there is in how the U.S. government processes, releases, and removes illegal immigrants.
“The cartels are going to see how things go the next couple of days,” the CBP official said. “The cartels are smart. They’ll probably send groups over to see if those groups make it in. I’m not saying you’re going to see a flood, but I think you’ll see more normal traffic getting caught.”