Migrants in El Paso face uncertainty with Court decision on Title 42

() — 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 expelling migrants before who have received an asylum hearing.

“We expected something else,” said Rosanni Rodríguez, a Venezuelan migrant, when told of the court decision.

Rodriguez huddled with her two children on a cold El Paso sidewalk Tuesday, wearing a jacket provided by a local church. She and her children have already tried to cross into the United States once, but were sent back to Mexico, where they were robbed and detained by immigration officials while they slept on the ground in a city plaza, she said.

Rodríguez is among the 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 border.

The controversial order was scheduled to end on December 21 but remains in legal limbo after the Supreme Court issued an order Wednesday allowing the policy to remain in effect while legal challenges unfold, a process that could drag on for at least several months.

“They are not going to 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 urged the Supreme Court to intervene and block a lower court decision to cancel the policy. In addition to staying the rescission of the order, the court said it would consider the state’s appeal in its next term, which begins in February.

Title 42 was implemented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, 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 argue that the policy is being used to effectively stop immigration at the US-Mexico border. .

Dylan Corbett, executive director of the Hope Border Institute which helps run some of El Paso’s shelters, warned Tuesday that the Supreme Court decision is expected to “extend the bottleneck at the border, create unsustainable pressure on the border surveillance and lead to more deaths”.

Officials hope the lifting of Title 42 will trigger an influx of immigrants to the US-Mexico border. Yet even with the policy in place, many migrants are undaunted, 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 staying in the Mexican border cities of Tijuana, Reynosa and Matamoros, city officials and advocates told Monday.

Pastor Timothy Perea, a lifelong El Paso resident who volunteers to help arriving immigrants, said he expects to see more trying to cross the border. “Get ready. They’re coming,” he said. “It’s a wave of people looking for a better life.”

El Paso braces for a possible wave of migrants

El Paso has become a focal point in the growing humanitarian crisis at the border with up to 2,500 newly arrived migrants from Mexico each day, according to the city’s mayor, Oscar Leeser. City officials have declared a state of emergency as the community has been overwhelmed by the continuous flow of asylum seekers.

While Title 42 remains in place while 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, said Deputy City Manager Mario D’ Augustine, this Tuesday.

“Some people talk about 10,000 to 15,000 people waiting in (Ciudad) Juárez to cross. If all of that came 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 being prepared to house the migrants, 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 parish churches have volunteered to house the migrants, he said. About 1,000 beds have been 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 .

But the city cannot accept immigrants who do not have documentation from Customs and Border Protection, according to Cruz-Acosta, who cited state and federal policies, which she said require immigrants to have documentation at government-run facilities.

If undocumented immigrants show up at government-run shelters, he said, they will connect with Customs and Border Protection to either turn them in or refer them to shelters run by NGOs.

Two local NGOs that are accepting undocumented immigrants into their shelters told last week that their facilities are overcrowded, forcing them to close their doors to many seeking shelter even as temperatures dropped dangerously low over the weekend.

Leeser told ‘s Pamela Paul on Tuesday that the situation at the border is “beyond Title 42.”

“We cannot continue this way with an immigration system that is broken and has to be fixed,” the mayor said. “It is bigger than the United States. I have to work with the UN 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 flood of incoming immigrants.

— Vogue’s Ariane, Priscilla Alvarez, Catherine E. Shoichet, Karol Suarez, Ashley Killough and ‘s Ed Lavandera contributed to this report.