With Title 42 set to expire in less than 10 days, President Joe Biden is calling in the reinforcements at the nation’s southern border.
The President will assign 1,500 extra active-duty troops to the border temporarily in order to help process what is expected to be a flood of migrant asylum-seekers.
U.S. officials revealed the order Tuesday, according to Politico.
Title 42 was put in place to allow the U.S. to use public health concerns as a valid reason to deny asylum to migrants. The rule was installed amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
But just as other COVID restrictions have fallen by the wayside, so too will Title 42 expire on May 11, after having already been issued a couple of extensions.
The concern is that the removal of the regulation could be an enticement for more migrants than usual to try and seek passage into America after three years’ worth of restrictions keeping them at bay.
Officials say the additional troops are being sent to satisfy a request from the Department of Homeland Security, and that their mission will be to fill “critical capability gaps,” including detection and monitoring, data entry and warehouse support.”
National Guard troops already at the border are also listed as active-duty, meaning their paycheck is also coming from the federal government at the moment, rather than their respective states.
“We have been preparing for this transition for more than a year and a half,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters last week, before Biden’s fresh allotment of troops. “Notwithstanding those preparations, we do expect that encounters at our southern border will [be] increasing, as smugglers are seeking to take advantage of this change and already are hard at work spreading disinformation that the border will be open after that,” he told reporters. “High encounters will place a strain on our entire system, including our dedicated and heroic workforce and our communities.”
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