Crossings at the US border with Mexico have dropped 50% after Title 42 restrictions ended at the end of Thursday and the Biden White House implemented an arguably tougher immigration policy, the US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, said on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden on Sunday told White House pool reporters that the border situation immediately after Title 42’s elimination was “much better than you all expected”. The president said he did not plan to visit the border “in the near term” because to do so at this stage “would just be disruptive”.
Mayorkas’s and Biden’s remarks on Sunday were a defense of the policy which replaced the expired measure that allowed border officials to expel migrants 2.7m times to their home country or Mexico without hearing their asylum claims, ostensibly to limit the spread of Covid-19.
Advocates have argued that the new Biden restrictions mimic two Donald Trump-era policies, but Mayorkas defiantly touted the updated measures, saying on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that the “US border patrol has experienced a 50% drop in the number of encounters versus what we were experiencing earlier in the week before Title 42 ended”.
The rules now bar migrants from asylum if they don’t request refugee status in another country before entering the US. Mayorkas added that, on Friday, border patrol officers had detained 6,300 migrants and about 4,200 on Saturday, down from more than 10,000 “before the end of Title 42 earlier last week”.
Mayorkas’s cited reduction in border crossings is what the administration expected when announcing the new asylum restriction. Mayorkas had previously said “the border is not open”, attempting to send a clear message to migrants on the Mexican side. He had also said that those who don’t pursue legal pathways to the US could face a “five-year ban on re-entry and potential criminal prosecution”.
The numbers appeared to be an early projection of what could happen in the upcoming weeks and months amid the Biden administration’s new border policy.
In some areas at the border such as Texas’s Rio Grande valley, agents apprehended 1,133 migrants, representing a 66% decrease as compared with the highest mark, 3,300, during the last fiscal year in the area, according to chief border patrol agent Gloria Chavez.
Nonetheless, there were still signs of the border attracting prospective migrants on Saturday. More than 1,500 miles (2,400km) west, near the San Ysidro port of entry in California, hundreds of people were sitting on cardboard boxes on a sloping hill between the two barriers that form the border walls.
Those people – mostly women and children – were on US soil, just steps away from Tijuana, Mexico, having crossed the actual border between the two countries. They were stuck in an area between two 30ft (10-meter) walls, waiting to be processed by the border patrol.
That crowd was gone by Sunday. But before that happened, Robert Vivar – an immigration missioner with the San Diego Episcopal diocese – recalled how “the first few days, there were maybe 100, 150 – then gradually, it started to increase to 200, 250.
“On a daily basis, [border patrol agents] come in and go and take women and children for processing,” he said.
Friends of Friendship Park Committee members, such as Vivar and Pedro Rios, along with other activists and observers, called it an “open-air detention center”. There were few visible services: just one portable toilet for 400 to 800 people.
Activists insisted they have seen an increase in the number of people showing up in the last week. The agency said it had nearly 25,000 migrants in custody on Thursday. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said they would increase the number of beds by several thousand.
However, the scene between the border walls was orderly. Children smiled through the thick, rusted bollards at volunteers who handed out crayons and notepads just three days after Mexico celebrated Mother’s Day and one day before the US recognized the holiday.
One young boy squeezed a new stuffed animal tightly.
Religious groups and non-profits in San Diego have organized an impromptu service site on the Mexican side of the wall that included a charging table for phones handed through the wall, and bins of donations – toilet paper, diapers, sanitary pads, first aid items, clothing and food.
There were rows of water bottles lined up in the barrier. Volunteers kept arriving throughout the afternoon: families dropped off donations, high schoolers showed up to hand out food and a minister walked along a stretch of the wall to get individual requests from new arrivals. People who spoke Spanish, French, Arabic and English came to the wall to ask for jackets, warm pants and socks as the sun set and the California desert turned cold.
A half mile to the west, border patrol agents monitored a men’s encampment on a windy hill. Volunteers loaded donations, mainly blankets and tarps, on to the agency’s trucks that offered to drive them up to the men’s group. Some of the attendees confirmed to the Guardian that the donations were delivered. Organizers are less certain about where people ended up when the border patrol took groups of 60 to 70 people for processing from either camp.
A federal judge in Florida on Friday blocked a Biden policy of expediting the release of some migrants to prevent overcrowding in border patrol facilities. Consequently, the administration asked the judge, Kent Wetherell, to pause his ruling because it could force border patrol agents to decline arrests in order to mitigate the overcrowding conditions.
Wetherell denied the Biden administration’s request, dismissing it as “borderline frivolous”. The Biden White House has said it plans to appeal the ruling.
