ADMINISTRATION FACING COURT BATTLES
Officials claim challenges may undermine efforts to manage crossings
As the southern border of the United States remained crowded with migrants Friday following the lifting of Title 42 restrictions, Biden administration officials lashed out at court challenges from the right and left that they said could undermine efforts to deal with record levels of border crossings in the days and weeks ahead.
Migrants continued to seek refuge in the United States in numerous pockets across the 2,000-mile border with Mexico, but U.S. Border Patrol officials and shelter operators said the flow of people was lighter than they had expected given how many people had traveled north from their homes in recent weeks.
Even as they expressed relief at the lower-than-expected numbers Friday, administration officials seethed about court rulings that they predicted would hamper their ability to deal with the latest increase in arrivals and lead to dangerous overcrowding at already jammed border facilities.
Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, criticized a late Thursday ruling by a federal judge in Florida that blocked the department from releasing migrants without a notice to appear in immigration court, something he said had been done routinely by prior administrations to speed up the process and relieve overcrowding. The ruling came at the request of Florida’s Republican attorney general, who argued that the administration cannot simply release the migrants into the country without an order to face a court hearing.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, called the ruling “sabotage, pure and simple.”
Officials also criticized human rights groups, who filed a lawsuit just after midnight challenging the administration’s new rule limiting who qualifies for asylum. Migrant rights activists Friday called the
new rule the “Biden-Harris asylum ban” and said it was blatantly illegal. But administration officials said the court challenges would only make the situation worse on the border.
“The lawsuits we are facing frankly from both sides of the aisle really clearly demonstrate just how fundamentally broken our immigration system is,” said Blas Nuñez-Neto, the assistant secretary for border and immigration policy at the Homeland Security Department.
In Washington, a bipartisan group of House lawmakers sought to offer a compromise solution, filing a bill Friday to extend for two years the government’s authority to immediately expel migrants attempting to enter the country unlawfully, much like they could during the pandemic.
But the bill, led by Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Jared Golden, D-Maine, has little chance of becoming law. It has already been criticized by some Democrats as too draconian and by some Republicans as doing too little to restrict migrants from making what they call frivolous asylum
claims.
Along the border Friday, there were few scenes of large or unruly crowds at the usual crossing points.
But in comments to reporters Friday morning, several top administration officials said they continue to expect record levels of border crossings in what they called a “difficult transition” that could stretch well into the summer months.
About 10,000 people crossed the border Thursday, a historically large number that strained the government’s network of Border Patrol facilities as well as the shelters run by cities, nonprofit groups and churches.
As of early Friday morning, the Border Patrol was holding more than 24,000 migrants in custody, according to internal data obtained by The New York Times. That is more than a typical day in November last year, when there were 12,000 migrants in Border Patrol custody and well over the agency’s stated maximum capacity of between 18,000 and 20,000.
In McAllen, Texas, the increase that many expected did not materialize at the McAllen-Hidalgo International Bridge, where Customs and Border Protection officers were processing a
small line of people entering the United States from Reynosa, Mexico, many of them regular crossers.
The first group to surrender to authorities and seek asylum — a mix of men, women and young children — reached the port of entry minutes after Title 42 expired. A row of Texas State Police trucks idled steps away from the international bridge.
In El Paso, dozens of migrants had gathered around Sacred Heart Church, a respite destination that was overwhelmed with some 2,000 migrants earlier this week. On Friday, some were kicking a soccer ball back and forth, and others were sitting with their backs up to a wall, surrounded by Red Cross blankets and plastic bags of food.
Shelter operators said that the population in their care dropped Friday, but that it was too soon to tell what could unfold in coming days, since most people who crossed were still being processed. But some predicted that the worst might have passed.
“The number of people that were picked up from the river levee on the other side of the wall yesterday was significant, but not nearly what everyone expected it was going to be,” said Ruben Garcia,
the director of the Annunciation House organization, which coordinates with U.S. Border Patrol for migrant care at a network of shelters in the El Paso area.
“We’ll have to see what happens in the next few days,” he said. “There are many variables.”
Mexico’s foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, offered an optimistic characterization of the situation Friday morning, saying that the border “is calm and normal, with no major arrivals or conflicts.”
But weather forecasters predicted some heavy rain along the Texas border over the weekend, with isolated pockets of up to 10 inches that could lead to flooding along the Rio Grande, which many of the migrants attempt to cross. Hail and damaging winds could also accompany some of these storms, and tornadoes were also possible, forecasters said.
In particular, they said there was the potential for flooding along the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass to Laredo, Texas, reaching levels not seen along that portion of the river in several years.