As of early last week, border crossings reached an all-time high, surpassing 10,000 illegal crossings per day, according to Customs and Border Protection data. Those numbers fell to about 6,300 on Friday and 4,200 on Saturday — days after the Trump-era policy referred to as Title 42 expired at midnight on Thursday.
“We’re in the third day,” Mayorkas said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” noting that the figures were down 50 percent from earlier in the week. “But, you know, we’ve been planning for this change for months and months and we’re executing on our plan, and we’re going to continue to do so.”
Under a new rule, most migrants are considered ineligible for asylum in the United States if they pass through another country on their way to a US border and have not previously sought asylum in that country.
This rule will not apply to those migrants who Secure an Asylum Interview in the United States Through an app called CBP One. However, despite a major overhaul of the app, asylum seekers remain migrants Disappointed Due to technical fault and difficulty in logging in for appointments.
Immigrants living in the United States illegally may be deported through a process known as “accelerated removal” and will be prohibited from re-entering for five years. DHS has said that immigrants who re-enter the United States after being deported will face criminal prosecution.
Republicans, however, looked to the same figures Mayorkas cited as evidence that the Biden administration was unprepared for a widely expected increase in the number of illegal crossings at that border.
Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said on CNN’s “State,” “The secretary failed to say that this week saw more crossings than any other week, any other time in our history.” Has been.” Of the union.
“Yes, there was some anticipation” that the Title 42 policy would end, Green said, “so people started coming in high numbers — in fact, record-breaking numbers — in the first half of the week.”
But Green distanced himself from family separation policy which President Donald Trump used while in office and that he said during the campaign that he would consider reviving if re-elected president.
“We are not separating families,” Green said. “I don’t think we should be separating families.” He said that family separation is not included in the border security law that House Republicans recently passed,
Representative Michael McCaul (R-Tex), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also downplayed the drop in encounters with migrants at the southern border after the Title 42 policy ended, saying he believed Caravans of migrants are still going to the border and “they still want to get in.”
“The last two and a half years speak for themselves,” McCall told ABC News’ “This Week.” “We have 5 million people entering this country illegally. … it’s unstable.
The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the Biden administration restrictions, calling them inhumane and dangerous to asylum seekers. Mayorkas stressed that the administration has created more legitimate avenues to enter the United States, but acknowledged that asylum seekers now have a “higher threshold of proof that they have to meet.”
“This is not an asylum ban,” Mayorkas said on “This Week.” “We have a humanitarian obligation, as well as a matter of security, to take out the brutal traffickers.”
Mayorkas also said he disagrees with a ruling handed down by a federal judge in Florida on Thursday that barred the immediate release of some migrants from overcrowded facilities, but said DHS is complying. Because the litigation continues.
“We think this is a very harmful regime when, in fact, our Border Patrol stations are overcrowded. It is a matter of safety and security of people including our own personnel, not just vulnerable migrants,” They said.
The mayor of the border city of Laredo, Tex., told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that while officials look at historic challenges at the border, preparations made in anticipation of the end of Title 42 policy have been “held up.”
“We are not overwhelmed at this point,” said Mayor Victor Treviño, who said the city received about 700 migrants Saturday but remains on “high alert” because of overflow from the El Paso and Brownsville areas.
Treviño credited the new Biden border restrictions, which include a rule that migrants from countries outside Mexico must first seek asylum in the country they pass through. “The number of migrants we were initially expecting – the big influx is not here yet,” Treviño said.
Rape. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), an outspoken moderate, told “Fox News Sunday” that the Biden administration was doing all it could at the border, constrained by a lack of resources that congressional Republicans refused to provide .
“Often the problem lies with the Congress,” he said. “I mean, we haven’t provided resources to the administration for immigration judges or processing. We haven’t provided resources for the Border Patrol. We haven’t provided resources for border security.”
Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Tex.), whose district includes a large portion of the El Paso border region, said Biden needed not only to secure the border but also to adjudicate the staggering backlog of asylum cases. There is also a need to provide many more immigration judges. ,
Asylum seekers who apply through the Biden administration’s CBP One app get a court date in 2031, Gonzales said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
