The day before Title 42 was scheduled to end, hundreds of migrants gathered on the banks of the Rio Grande near Brownsville, Texas. Some of them cut a hole through the fence and made it to American soil before uniformed agents closed the fence.
The majority retreated and waited their time. Elizabeth Guerra, a migrant from Brazil who describes herself as “desperate”, said: “Come midnight when the deportation policy is over”, she plans to turn herself in to immigration officials. US residency.
Anticipating that thousands more would try to do the same along the border, officials in Texas cities like Brownsville, Laredo and El Paso declared states of emergency, allowing them to seek more resources. from the federal government to transport and store new people. next turn.
In Brownsville alone, nearly 2,000 people have crossed the border in recent days, something the head of the Border Patrol, Raul Ortiz, said he hadn’t seen in a decade.
“That is limiting our ability,” said Eddie Treviño, district judge for Cameron County, which includes Brownsville. “There’s an element of unknowns about what happens after Title 42 expires.”
Over the past two days, more than 11,000 migrants a day have crossed the southern border illegally, according to internal data obtained by The New York Times. And the Border Patrol was holding about 10,000 more people than its physical capacity.
El Paso has taken additional steps, temporarily closing a street near a downtown migrant shelter.
El Paso regional leaders had hoped to avert an immigration crisis like the one they witnessed late last year, when waves of migrants overwhelmed shelters in the country. area, leading to an alarming increase in the number of people sleeping on the streets as temperatures drop below freezing.
But in recent days, the number of migrants has surpassed the number crossing the sea in December, with thousands flooding shelters and filling the streets. The city has turned two vacant schools and a reception center into a shelter.
“We’ve never seen this before,” Oscar Leeser, the mayor of El Paso, said Wednesday.
The crowd largely left after a rare Department of Homeland Security law enforcement operation on Tuesday and Wednesday to encourage undocumented migrants to turn themselves into Border Patrol so they can be registered in the immigration system.
Local officials have asked the federal government to help the approximately 2,500 undocumented migrants who are crowding a local church for support and assistance. Border agents distributed leaflets to migrants to encourage them to turn themselves in.
“It’s not about chasing people around, down the street into a church, in a protected area,” Mr Ortiz said. “It’s a very methodical approach.”
Anthony Good, the Border Patrol’s El Paso regional head, better known as Scott, said NGOs supporting migrants want the government to encourage people to turn themselves in. by promising that they would not be deported.
“But we can’t guarantee that,” Mr. Good said.
So it’s a gamble. “People have to trust that the process will work for them,” said Ruben Garcia, executive director of the House of Annunciation, a large shelter.
In the end, more than 900 migrants turned themselves in. The overwhelming majority were released back home after being disposed of.
On Thursday morning, the sidewalks around a downtown church where some 2,500 migrants had camped for days were empty, except for a few dozen. The collapsed cardboard boxes they had slept in were gone. Gone are the overflowing trash cans. The alleys that were once filled with families were almost empty.
Paulo Molina, 25, a Venezuelan migrant, said he waited five hours to surrender himself to the Border Patrol. On Thursday, he got a bus ticket to Washington, DC, promised a job at a restaurant.
“Thank God I got the papers, and now I can hit the road,” he said.
Edgar Sandoval reports from Brownsville, Texas, and Eileen Sullivan, Todd Heisler And Miriam Jordan from El Paso.
