Lauren C. Moye, FISM News
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A senior source within Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) has warned that there is no plan to counteract the expected surge in migrant encounters once Title 42 lifts on Dec. 21.
The exclusive report coming from Breitbart Texas based on an anonymous senior official within CBP says that “the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is not engaged in any substantive planning to confront the expected surge in migration once Title 42 is lifted per court order.”
Instead, border patrol leaders are supposed to find additional detention facility space by working with “non-government agencies to increase shelter space,” the official said.
However, the resources provided by these organizations are already limited. Eagle Pass, Texas leaders have already stated they cannot absorb another wave of migrants, the source explained. Meanwhile, the Eagle Pass detention center is already filled over 100% of capacity on most days.
Federal U.S. Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the end of Title 42 in November, but then placed a five-week stay against his order at the Biden administration’s request to allow the “government to prepare for an orderly transition to new policies at the border.”
The stay expires on Dec. 21, which means the Trump-era policy used to control immigration into the U.S. amid COVID-19 pandemic concerns will officially come to an end.
Even with Title 42 in place, there has been another notable surge in migrant encounters at the Mexico-U.S. border. There were 230,678 migrant encounters in October at this border according to CBP statistics, which made for the eighth consecutive month where encounters numbered above 200,000.
In October 2022, there were 164,827 migrant encounters. This was already more than double the October 2021 numbers of 71,929.
The border crisis has grown so bad that in November, DHS Secretary Antony Mayorkas quietly ordered the Air Marshalls off of planes to assist CBP.
There is an anticipated surge in migrant encounters once Title 42 officially ends due to asylum seekers, mostly from Venezuela who have been waiting to cross.
To put it in perspective, the New York Post reported back in May that there were somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 migrants total just in Juarez, Mexico who were waiting for Title 42 to end.
On Nov. 27, Juarez city and Mexican state officials busted up one of these migrant camps to force up to 800 migrants to move elsewhere. This camp was positioned on the Mexican side of the border across from El Paso, Texas.
On the U.S. side of the border across from Juarez, El Paso has warned they cannot accommodate this influx of migrants. Some of their migrant shelters were recently shuttered due to aging infrastructure and increasing costs.
Meanwhile, the city recently ended its free busing service to move migrants through the area to other shelters after city taxpayers learned they would foot the majority of the bill for that service. The city had $6 million allocated for this service and expected that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would cover the majority of that cost. Instead, FEMA places a 30% cap on reimbursement for transportation services.
This means that between late August and Sept. 30, El Paso spent $2.8 million in charter bus fees. At most, FEMA would reimburse $840.000 of those funds.