Cnn
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The future of migrants waiting in El Paso, Texas after crossing the US-Mexico border remains uncertain following Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision allowing federal officials to continue removing migrants before they receive a asylum hearing.
“We expected something else,” said Rosani Rodríguez, a Venezuelan migrant, when informed of the court’s decision.
Rodriguez huddled with her two sons on a cold El Paso sidewalk on Tuesday, wearing a jacket provided by a local church. She and her children have tried to enter the United States once before, but were sent back to Mexico, where they were robbed and detained by immigration officials as they slept on the floor in a city square, she said.
Rodríguez is among tens of thousands of migrants who have arrived at the southern border despite the uncertain future of Title 42, a Trump-era policy that allows US authorities to quickly return most migrants to the other side of the border .
The controversial order was due to close on Dec. 21, but remains in legal limbo after the Supreme Court issued an order Wednesday allowing the policy to remain in effect while legal disputes unfold, a process that could take at least several months.
“They won’t give us the opportunity to cross legally,” Rodríguez said. “That’s what we wanted, to be able to cross legally, but you can’t.”
Several Republican-led states have urged the Supreme Court to step in and block a lower court decision to end the policy. In addition to holding back the overturning order, the court said it will consider the state’s appeal in its next term, which begins in February.
Title 42 was implemented by the Center for Disease Control in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Officials at the time argued that the public health order was intended to slow the spread of Covid-19, but immigration advocates say the policy is being used to effectively stop immigration at the US-Mexico border. .
In the photos: El Paso sees an increase in border crossings
Dylan Corbett, executive director of the Hope Border Institute which helps manage some of the shelters in El Paso, warned Tuesday that he hopes the Supreme Court’s decision “extends the bottleneck at the border, creates unsustainable pressure on law enforcement ” and cause more deaths. ”
Officials hope the revocation of Title 42 will trigger an influx of immigrants at the US-Mexico border. Yet even with the policy in place, many migrants are undeterred, some choosing to cross the border illegally while others wait in crowded shelters, makeshift camps or on the streets of Mexican border towns.
At least 22,000 migrants are in the Mexican border cities of Tijuana, Reynosa and Matamoros, city officials and advocates told CNN on Monday.
Pastor Timothy Perea, a lifelong El Paso resident who volunteers to help arriving immigrants, said he expects to see more attempts to cross the border. “Get ready. It’s coming,” he said. “It’s a wave of people looking for a better life.”
El Paso has become a focal point in the growing humanitarian crisis on the border with up to 2,500 migrants just arriving from Mexico every day, according to the city’s mayor, Oscar Leeser. City authorities declared a state of emergency as the community was overwhelmed by the continuous flow of asylum seekers.
While Title 42 remains in place as legal challenges play out in the courts, El Paso is developing a plan to handle a potential surge of immigrants in the event Title 42 is terminated, Deputy City Manager Mario D said in Aug. , Tuesday.
“Some people are talking about 10,000-15,000 people waiting in (Ciudad) Juárez to cross. If all of this happened in a relatively short period of time, space would be difficult. We know transportation would be difficult,” D’Agostino said.
Two vacant schools in the city are preparing to house the immigrants, D’Agostino said. One will be ready to use within two days, while the second won’t be changed for a few weeks, he added.
Hotel shelters have also been set up and some parishes have volunteered to house the migrants, he said. About 1,000 beds were set up at the El Paso convention center, which housed more than 480 migrants overnight on Christmas Eve and 420 on Christmas Day, city spokeswoman Laura Cruz-Acosta confirmed to CNN.
But the city can’t accept immigrants who don’t have customs and border protection paperwork, according to Cruz-Acosta, who cited state and federal policies, which she says require immigrants to have paperwork at government-run facilities. .
If undocumented immigrants show up at government-run shelters, he said, they will be linked to Customs and Border Protection to turn themselves in or be referred to NGO-run shelters.
Two local NGOs that are accepting undocumented migrants in their shelters told CNN last week that their facilities are overcrowded, forcing them to close their doors to many seeking shelter even as temperatures dropped dangerously over the weekend.
Leeser told CNN’s Pamela Paul on Tuesday that the situation at the border is “beyond headline 42.”
“We cannot continue like this with a broken immigration system that needs to be fixed,” the mayor said. “It’s bigger than the United States. I have to work with the United Nations and the countries around us to be able to solve it.”
El Paso has already received more than $10 million in federal funds to support its efforts to handle the surge of incoming immigrants.
