Along the US southern border, two cities – El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez just across the waters of the Rio Grande in Mexico – were trying to prepare for a new surge of as many as 5,000 new migrants a day as pandemic-era immigration restrictions were set to expire this week, setting in motion plans for emergency housing, food and other essentials.
Even with the ruling from the US supreme court on Monday evening that the restriction known as Title 42 would not end after all, as had been ordered by a lower court, confusion and tension were high.
On the Mexican side of the international border, only heaps of discarded clothes, shoes and backpacks remained on Sunday morning on the riverbank, where until a couple of days ago hundreds of people were lining up to turn themselves in to US officials.
One young man from Ecuador stood uncertainly on the Mexican side; he asked two journalists if they knew anything about what would happen if he turned himself in to authorities in El Paso after unlawfully crossing the border without having a sponsor in the US – a verified relative or host who can vouch for someone as they go through the drawn-out legal process of applying for asylum in the US.
Then he gingerly removed his sneakers and socks and hopped across the low water.
On the US side, by a small fence guarded by several border patrol vehicles, he joined a line of a dozen people who stood waiting with no US officials in sight.
The El Paso county judge, Ricardo Samaniego, told the Associated Press that the region, home to one of the busiest border crossings in the country, was coordinating housing and relocation efforts with local groups and other cities, as well as calling on the state and federal government for humanitarian help.
The area was braced for an influx of new arrivals that was expected to double the numbers currently coming across the border into the west Texas city via irregular immigration every day – after the federal public health rule Title 42 was due to end on Wednesday.
The rule has been used to deter more than 2.5 million migrants from crossing since March 2020, but on Monday evening, US supreme court chief justice John Roberts, at the request of Republican officials in 19 states, temporarily blocked the Biden administration from ending Title 42.
The Republican officials, led by the attorneys general in Arizona and Louisiana, on Monday asked the supreme court to act after a federal appeals court on Friday declined to put on hold a judge’s ruling last month that invalidated Title 42.
At a migrant shelter not far from the river in a poor Ciudad Juárez neighborhood, Carmen Aros, 31, knew little about US policies. In fact, she said she’d heard the border might close on 21 December.
She fled cartel violence in the Mexican state of Zacatecas a month ago, right after her fifth daughter was born and her husband went missing. The Methodist pastor who runs the Buen Samaritano shelter put her on a list to be paroled into the US and she waits every week to be called.
“They told me there was asylum in Juárez, but in truth, I didn’t know much,” she said on the bunk bed she shared with the girls. “We got here … and now let’s see if the government of the United States can resolve our case.”
At a vast shelter run by the Mexican government in a former Ciudad Juárez factory, dozens of migrants watched the World Cup final on Sunday afternoon while a visiting team of doctors from El Paso treated many who had come down with respiratory illness in the cold weather.
Constantly changing policies make it hard to plan, said Dylan Corbett, director of the Hope Border Institute, a Catholic organization helping migrants in both El Paso and Juárez. The group started the clinic two months ago.
“You have a lot of pent-up pain,” Corbett said. “I’m afraid of what’s going to happen.” With government policies in disarray, “the majority of the work falls to faith communities to pick up the pieces and deal with the consequences.”
Just a couple blocks across the border, sleet fell in El Paso as about 80 huddled migrants ate tacos that volunteers grilled up. Temperatures in the region were set to drop below freezing this week.
“We’re going to keep giving them as much as we have,” said Veronica Castorena, who came out with her husband with tortillas and ground beef as well as blankets for those who will probably sleep on the streets.
Jeff Petion, the owner of a trucking school in town, said this was his second time coming with employees to help migrants in the streets. “They’re out here, they’re cold, they’re hungry, so we wanted to let them know they’re not alone.”
But across the street from Petion, Kathy Countiss, a retiree, said she worried the new arrivals will get out of control in El Paso, draining resources and directing enforcement away from criminals to those claiming asylum.
On Saturday, El Paso’s mayor, Oscar Leeser, issued an emergency declaration to access additional local and state resources for building shelters and other urgently needed aid.
Samaniego, the county judge, said the order came one day after El Paso officials sent the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, a letter requesting humanitarian assistance for the region, adding that the request was for resources to help tend to and relocate the newly arriving migrants, not additional security forces – on which Texas and the federal government have spent heavily.
El Paso officials have been coordinating with organizations to provide temporary housing for migrants while they are processed and given sponsors and relocated to bigger cities, from where they can be flown or bussed to their final destinations, Samaniego said.
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