Approximately 50,000 migrants are waiting just across the U.S.-Mexico border in the hopes that they will be able to enter the United States once the Biden administration lifts Title 42, a public health policy implemented under former President Donald Trump that allows migrants to be turned away at the border before they can claim asylum.
According to Biden administration internal documents viewed by Axios and published Wednesday, tens of thousands of migrants are waiting in Mexico for their chance to enter the United States. Department of Homeland Security intelligence determined that between 40,000 and 50,000 migrants are currently in Mexican shelters preparing to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
“The U.S. Border Patrol already is managing numbers at historic levels due to large movements of people fleeing violence, corruption, poverty, climate change and other hardships,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas claimed on Tuesday.
“Numbers could rise further from confusion over recent court orders and as smugglers continue to peddle misinformation to make a profit,” he added.
Mayorkas was apparently referring to the nationwide injunction ordering the Biden administration not to terminate Title 42.
Last week, Judge Robert Summerhays of the Louisiana Western District Court found that the Biden administration failed to follow proper procedures to end the policy.
“An agency’s response to a dangerous and largely unknown contagious disease may justify emergency action that dispenses with the normal rulemaking process. The same emergency conditions do not exist—or at least the CDC has not explained how such emergency conditions exist—with respect to terminating Its COVID-related orders based on improving conditions and allowing DHS to resume normal operations under Title 8,” Summerhays wrote. “Simply put, the CDC has not explained how the present circumstances prevented the CDC from issuing the Termination Order through the required notice and comment process under the [Administrative Procedure Act].”
According to CNN, Department of Justice spokesman Anthony Coley said on Friday that the DOJ plans to appeal the court’s decision.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) invoked its authority under Title 42 due to the unprecedented public-health dangers caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. CDC has now determined, in its expert opinion, that continued reliance on this authority is no longer warranted in light of the current public-health circumstances. That decision was a lawful exercise of CDC’s authority,” Coley said in a statement.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said Summerhays’ ruling was a “great win.”
“Title 42 is upheld by a federal judge,” Brnovich wrote. “Our office will continue to do everything in our power to push back against the lawlessness of the Biden administration.”
