With Title 42 ending in less than a week, Texas judge warns migrant crossings could surge to 4,500 a day

The tidal wave of migrants flooding over the US border and claiming asylum could double after Title 42 is lifted, a Texas judge has warned.
El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego — who is in regular close contact with Border Patrol and local agencies dealing with the migrant crisis said the El Paso area, currently the nation’s busiest border crossing, could see a huge surge in less than a week.
“From my understanding, starting after the 21st of December, it could be as high as 4,200 to 4,500 [people] a day — which would double the apprehensions we have right now,” Samaniego told Border Report.
Title 42 is a measure invoked in the COVID pandemic which allows Border Patrol to stop migrants from certain countries entering the US on public health grounds. It was used to deny entry to the country to almost 40% of all border crossers but was recently struck down by a federal judge.
The El Paso influx is said to signify what will happen across the entire southern border. In May, under-fire Department of Homeland Security head Alejandro Mayorkas even admitted that when Title 42 ends there could be as many as 18,000 people crossing into the US from Mexico per day, saying it would put his department under “extraordinary strain.”
Title 42 allows Border Patrol to stop migrants from specific countries entering the US on public health grounds. USA TODAY NETWORK/Sipa USA
The City of El Paso has seen huge swathes of immigrants crossing the border in 2022, and spent $10 million housing, feeding and busing migrants to cities like New York, before pulling back, citing mounting costs. Last week, local leaders were still calling the situation a “managed crisis” and hoped to avoid “chaos.”
However, that chaos arrived over the weekend when more than 1,500 migrants flooded the border, leaving agents processing 2,400 people a day — the amount they had previously been told to prepare for once Title 42 was lifted, which has left the city seriously overwhelmed – with over 5,000 migrants held in custody and no room in shelters leaving 900 processed migrants to be ejected onto the streets, per the city’s publicly released data.
Those sleeping on the streets of downtown El Paso braved freezing temperatures. Four migrants were beaten and robbed while waiting for a bus out of town, the El Paso Police Department said in a press release.
To mitigate the number of people, Border Patrol is flying migrants out of town just to be able to process them, the agency confirmed to The Post Wednesday. Migrants are being flown on Immigration and Customs Enforcement planes to processing centers across the southern border where their biometrics will be taken and extensive background checks will be conducted.
Meanwhile, Border Patrol agents assigned to other parts of the border have been brought into El Paso and over 1,000 non-agent employees have been brought in to process migrants in order to let agents continue to patrol the border, a US Customs and Border Protection spokesperson told The Post.
The City of El Paso spent $10 million dollars on housing, feeding and busing migrants. USA TODAY NETWORK/Sipa USA
The county is considering opening a shelter to keep migrants from sleeping on the streets Currently, neither the city nor county are sheltering migrants — except for the city paying for hotel rooms for those who test positive for COVID-19 to quarantine in.
The Rescue Mission of El Paso shelter, said it was sheltering over 260 people even though it only has a capacity of 190, according to KDBC-TV.
“We’ve never seen anything like this before,” Blake Barrow, CEO of the Rescue Mission told the local station.
Space is so tight the mission is allowing people to sleep in their lobby and library.
“Are we spinning in the ocean? Yes, but turn around and look at all these kids on the porch,” said Burrow. “We’ve got to do whatever we can do to take care of them.”