A migrant and a member of the Texas Army National Guard between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on Thursday. Photo: Alejandro Cegarra/ The New York Times.
Mexican and U.S. authorities confirmed on Friday that no increase in migrant crossings has been detected following the recent repeal of Title 42, a deportation policy approved by Trump.
Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said that the inflow of migrants had fallen after a record due to the repeal of Title 42. He added that there had been no confrontations or violence on the shared border.
“The flow is decreasing today, at least so far we haven’t had any confrontations and violent situations at the border,” the foreign minister said during the morning AMLO conference.
Blas Núñez-Neto, US Undersecretary of State for Homeland Security, told a news conference that it was too early for official figures, noting that authorities are alert to any incident at the border.
“We can confirm that we did not see a significant increase in migration this morning,” Núñez-Neto said. However, he acknowledged that the number of arrests in the region remained “high”.
Title 42, in effect until last midnight, allowed US authorities to expel undocumented migrants without the ability to seek asylum on grounds of preventing the spread of Covid.
However, the authorities implemented Title 8, a regulation that provides an expedited deportation mechanism and provides for stricter legal sanctions for illegal immigrants, such as a five-year travel ban to the United States.
Mexico announced this morning that it would not allow the return of more than 1,000 non-Mexican migrants a day to its territory.
“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 and we wouldn’t accept that. That has been the case since Title 42,” said Chancellor Ebrard.
At least 24,000 border agents are patrolling the area, in addition to 1,500 troops that the Pentagon will gradually deploy in the coming days.
(With information from teleSUR)