Border cities in Texas are bracing for an influx of migrants, as the Trump-era Covid policy Title 42 comes to an end this week.
The rule, which was rolled out in an apparent bid to prevent people from entering the country and spreading coronavirus, saw officials turn away more than 3 million people from the country’s southern border over the past three years.
Now, cities like El Paso have declared an emergency ahead of the Thursday expiration of the policy, while Texas’ Republican governor Greg Abbott said he was deploying soldiers to the border.
“With the ending of Title 42 on Thursday, President Biden is laying down the welcome mat to people across the entire world,” he told USA Today.
“The Texas National Guard is loading Blackhawk helicopters and C-130s and deploying specially trained soldiers for the Texas Tactical Border Force, who will be deployed to hotspots all along the border to help intercept and repel large groups of migrants trying to enter Texas illegally.”
Presdent Joe Biden has defended his own decision to send 1,500 troops to the border ahead of Thursday, batting off criticism that he has failed to adequately prepare for Title 42’s expiration – his officials claim they have spent more than a year putting plans in place.
Many of the people crossing into the US are expected to travel through Brownsville, north of the town of Matamoros in Mexico, the recent scene of an SUV crash that left eight people dead and around 10 others injured outside of a migrant centre.
What is Title 42?
The policy is part of the country’s Covid emergency declaration and allows border agents to swifty turn away migrants at land borders in the US without having to take them into custody – in what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said would mitigate the risk of coronavirus.
A week after then-president Donald Trump declared Covid a national emergency, Title 42 was rolled out. The policy saw around 3 million people turned away at the US border following the outbreak of Covid and is set to expire on Thursday.
Why is it expiring?
Although the Biden administration has made use of the policy, particularly against a background of an unexpected increase in migration to the US amid issues in Nicaragua and Venezuela, it is allowing it to expire on 11 May.
This is because the Covid public health emergency is expiring – and Title 42 relies on the public health emergency for legitimacy after the CDC concluded in April last year that there was no public health reason to turn away migrants at the southern border.
In anticipating an influx of people to US borders, the Biden administration has attempted to legislate its way out of the situation, introducing a raft of measures it hopes will manage arrivals.
