Title 42 Expiration and Its Effects on Migration at the US-Mexico Border
The pandemic-era border restriction known as Title 42 has expired.
Officials have been warning that the change in policy could attract a surge of migrants and worsen an already challenging humanitarian crisis at the southern border.
Title 42 was first implemented under the Trump administration as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Migrants were either returned to their home countries or sent back into Mexico. Without the policy in place, US immigration authorities will return to decades-old protocols. Under that system, migrants are either removed from the country, detained, or released into the United States while their cases make their way through immigration court.
The Biden administration has been making various preparations to deal with the anticipated influx. Thousands of reinforcements have been sent to the border, including asylum officers and US troops.
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A woman is helped off a freight train after she became too scared to climb down from the roof on May 7. Migrants have been traveling on top of freight trains as they headed north from southern Mexico. The woman’s son, Leonardo Luzardo, told CNN it had been a long, cold night atop the train, feeling like their bodies were turning to ice. “It seemed like we were going to freeze,” he said. Evelio Contreras/CNN