At least 24,000 border patrol agents are patrolling the area, in addition to the 1,500 troops the Pentagon will gradually deploy over the next few days.
Both the United States and Mexico said on Friday they have not seen a significant increase in migrant crossings across the shared border in the first hours since the repeal of Title 42, the hot eviction policy approved by then-President Donald Trump in 2020 .
On the Mexican side, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard. He said the influx of migrants has eased after hitting a record high due to the end of the Title 42 ban, which expired at midnight on Thursday. He added that there had been no confrontations or violence at the border with the United States in the past few hours.
According to Ebrad, “Today the flow is going down, at least until now we haven’t had any confrontations and violent situations at the border,” he stressed during President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s usual press conference.
From the United States, however, Undersecretary for National Security Blas Núñez-Neto admitted at a press conference that it was too early to provide official figures and assured that the authorities would continue to pay close attention to any events at the border.
“We can confirm that we did not see any significant increase in migration this morning,” the official said, but said the number of arrests in the region remained “high”.
At midnight, following the end of the Covid-19 health emergency, the US stopped using Title 42, which allowed for the deportation of undocumented migrants without the possibility of seeking asylum, but introduced other restrictions at the border and began deporting a further ordinance known as Title 8.
Núñez-Neto warned that from now on, anyone who crosses the border without regular immigration status “is not eligible for asylum,” will be quickly expelled from the country, and may be barred from entering the United States for five years.
However, Mexico announced this morning that it would not allow more than a thousand non-Mexican migrants per day to return to its territory.
Ebrard reiterated that despite the validity of Title 42 that only “a thousand migrants were admitted per day”, that number will remain. He even assured that the highest number received in a month was 16,000 migrants.
“Mexico has told them that there is no way it can accommodate more than a thousand people a day, we don’t have the capacity nor would we accept it. This has been in effect since Title 42.”
At least 24,000 border patrol agents are patrolling the area, in addition to the 1,500 troops the Pentagon will gradually deploy over the next few days.
(With information from TeleSUR)
