US set to limit asylum at Mexico border

The rule announced Wednesday is part of new measures meant to crack down on illegal border crossings while creating new legal pathways. That includes a plan to open 100 regional migration hubs across the Western Hemisphere and granting humanitarian parole to 30,000 people a month to enter the country from four countries. US officials have detailed steps they’ve taken, including increasing deportation flights, as they prepare for what many are expecting to be a substantial increase in migrants at the US-Mexico border.

“Our plan will deliver results, but it will take time for those results to be fully realized,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned.

Many migrants, spurred by concerns that it may soon become harder to stay in the US, were trying to cross before Title 42 expires and the new rule takes effect at the end of the day today.

Under Title 42, border officials have quickly returned people — and they did so 2.8 million times since March 2020. But after the restrictions expire Thursday, migrants caught crossing illegally will not be allowed to return for five years. They can face criminal prosecution if they do.

At the Rio Grande in Matamoros on Wednesday, migrants arrived steadily. Many stripped down before descending the steep riverbank grasping plastic bags filled with clothes. They slowly waded into the river as more migrants arrived, some crossing themselves before following the line across the flowing border. One family swaddled a tiny baby inside an open suitcase. A man held it atop his head while another waded beside him as a precaution. Other children rode on shoulders. On the US side they scrambled up the bank, pausing to put on dry clothing, before carefully picking their way through the rows of concertina wire.

In Ciudad Juarez, migrants arrived this week in small groups by train or bus, leaving daily to surrender to the US authorities.

Fran Tovar, a 30-year-old electrician from Venezuela who left two children behind to try to reach the US, was expelled from the US on his first attempt. He was trying again 24 hours later, with the goal of crossing before Title 42’s use expires.

“There is fear and anguish,” Tovar said Wednesday, adding that he has spent three months in Juarez trying to get an appointment through an app the US has encouraged migrants to use to present themselves at a border entry point and seek admission.

Roughly 10,000 people were apprehended by Border Patrol on Tuesday, among the largest apprehensions in a single day, according to a US official who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. More than 27,000 people were in custody. Custody numbers vary as migrants are released or deported, but in March 8,600 people were in Border Patrol custody.

Miguel Meza, the head of migrant programs for Catholic Relief Services, which has 26 migrant shelters across Mexico, estimated that about 55,000 migrants were in the border cities across from the US on Wednesday. The shelter space is “saturated,” he said, and migrants were spilling into areas around them.