Thread: Border falling into chaos ahead of Title 42 end date: 'We’re in trouble'

Border falling into chaos ahead of Title 42 end date: 'We’re in trouble'

by Anna Giaritelli, Homeland Security Reporter
May 03, 2023 11:45 AM

EXCLUSIVE — The U.S. Border Patrol has already begun to see a dramatic uptick in the number of illegal immigrants apprehended up and down the southern border, a week before the government had anticipated seeing new records set.

As of Tuesday, Border Patrol had in its custody an average of 22,664 people who were intercepted after crossing the border illegally, according to internal data viewed by the Washington Examiner and confirmed by two senior Border Patrol officials Wednesday.

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A day earlier, Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz disclosed that agents had intercepted 22,220 people over the past 72 hours. Agents in the Rio Grande Valley in southeastern Texas made the most arrests of the nine regional outposts on the southern border, 6,371, according to regional leader Gloria Chavez.

Border Patrol employees ranging from supervisors on the Texas border to regional managers to the top echelon of leadership at Washington headquarters shared in conversations and text messages with the Washington Examiner over the past week how the situation in Texas and New Mexico has already gotten out of hand and left them seriously troubled over what more could be coming and how they will respond.

Over the past week, Border Patrol has taken more people into custody than the capacity of its facilities.

Unable to move them out of custody, the number of detained individuals has spiked.

Border Patrol is barred from holding children or adults for more than three days and had created more space inside facilities and installed pop-up tents at locations across the border to ensure overcrowding would not be an issue later this month as illegal immigration levels are expected to soar to their highest in national history when Title 42 ends.

For example, in El Paso, Border Patrol has completed two pop-up tent facilities and has a third in the works.

But by Tuesday, Border Patrol was already stretched thin apprehending, transporting, processing, and either releasing or removing immigrants. The internal data shared with the Washington Examiner also showed that the average immigrant was in Border Patrol custody for 73.76 hours, more than the 72-hour limit set forth by its National Standards on Transport, Escort, Detention, and Search policy.

Elected leaders in border cities have been bracing for the end of Title 42 on May 11, when a pandemic public health policy will be reversed and Border Patrol will no longer be able to immediately expel people after initially encountering them. Over the past three years, immigrants have faced immediate expulsion.

The end of Title 42, a third attempt after May 2022 and December 2022 efforts failed, would mean that immigrants will not be immediately returned to Mexico but have an opportunity to seek asylum in the U.S. or be released into the country on parole without seeking asylum.

"We haven’t even hit the 11th and that’s when it gets bad. If we’re seeing this daily, we’re in trouble. We’re in deep, deep, deep trouble," said Chris Cabrera, a 21-year Border Patrol agent and vice president of the National Border Patrol Council's Rio Grande Valley chapter.

Last week, the governor of Chihuahua, the Mexican state that neighbors El Paso, warned that the city had 35,000 immigrants who planned to cross after May 11.

The anticipated surge of people over the border prompted the mayors of Texas border cities Brownsville, El Paso, and Laredo to declare a state of emergency this past weekend.

Parts of downtown El Paso have already been inundated with people who have just crossed the border.



Anna Giaritelli
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Taken today outside the locked Sacred Heart Church in downtown El Paso, where the Democratic mayor has declared a state of emergency ahead of Title 42 ending. There are as many if not more people on the street as in December. Not all were released by Border Patrol, some evaded.

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4:50 PM · May 2, 2023

A senior Border Patrol official based in El Paso told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday on the condition of anonymity that most immigrants are illegally crossing east of a golf course east of downtown and west of the city near Santa Teresa, New Mexico.

"It's getting really bad here," said a Border Patrol supervisor in El Paso who was not authorized to speak with the media.

Illegal immigrants who are arrested and released to nonprofit groups in the community often end up on the street awaiting food, shelter, or transportation assistance. At the Sacred Heart Church downtown, hundreds of men sat and stood outside the church Tuesday afternoon.

The church, as well as other groups that visit throughout the day, pass out free food. When police make their rounds, some men will jump behind the short fence that surrounds the building since that area between the fence and brick building is technically church property and therefore off-limits for arrests because the men are at a place of worship — even though they do not enter the building or attend daily Mass.



Anna Giaritelli
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This is west of El Paso, South of Santa Teresa, New Mexico but west of Sunland Park.

Every night the last two weeks, Border Patrol agents have seen buses driving along the Chihuahua highway to a point where Obama-era fence can be easily cut and hundreds cross through that spot…Show more

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Anna Giaritelli
@Anna_Giaritelli

Driving through the center of El Paso’s migrant crisis… this isn’t last December, it’s today.

Mostly men line the streets outside Sacred Heart Church. They receive free food throughout the day. Lots of cigarette smoking. When police come by, the men will jump behind the short…

https://twitter.com/Anna_Giaritelli/...le-42-end-date



5:50 PM · May 2, 2023 from Sunland Park, NM

Immigrants who evaded Border Patrol and entered the city without getting caught are the primary target of police arrests outside the church, and nonprofit groups that receive federal funding through the Federal Emergency Management Agency are not legally permitted to provide goods or services because it is funded by taxpayer money.

More than 1,200 miles southeast on the other end of Texas by South Padre Island, Border Patrol agents have apprehended more people than were seen in the historic crossing of Haitian migrants into Del Rio, Texas, in September 2021.

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Two years ago, approximately 15,000 people waded across the border from Acuna, Coahuila, to Del Rio, in a matter of days. They camped outside under the Del Rio International Bridge for days as Border Patrol struggled to respond.

Just last week, 14,000 people were interdicted crossing into Brownsville, not including those encountered over the weekend and into this week.

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"Gloria Chavez is doing the best she can with what she has," Cabrera said.

Cabrera said in recent days, a mixture of compacted sand and gravel has been laid down to create a trail from the river to the outdoor processing site, where hundreds, if not thousands, of pieces of wet clothing are on the ground. Trash is a growing problem throughout the area.

Late last week, the city of Brownsville worked with Customs and Border Protection and utility companies to set up a temporary outdoor processing site not far from the Rio Grande and roughly half a mile away from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley-Brownsville campus.

Tents were put up for immigrants in custody to wait in the shade and out of the 90-degree heat, but far too many people remained in the sun late last week, according to a photo shared by Cabrera.

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Border Patrol has begun intaking people while they are at the outdoor site awaiting transportation to stations.

This week, Border Patrol is expected to open a full command center at the same site.

Cabrera criticized putting up tents given that Brownsville was located on the Gulf of Mexico and hurricane season was less than a month out.

Instead, Cabrera questioned why the Border Patrol was not repelling immigrants from crossing as he had been trained to do in the six years that he worked on boat patrol.

"Put boats on the water. Don’t let them get across. Do not let them make landfall," Cabrera said. "When we would have groups coming across, we would cut them off at mid-river and turn them around."

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/p...le-42-end-date

Look at the first picture.

This is disgusting, we are going to have an outbreak of infectious diseases! E.coli, plague, typhus!


That border needs to be shut down and we need bulldozers to clean that filth up!

This is infuriating!