Photo: John Moore/Getty Images
The Migrants backed up in Mexico are desperate for help and say they have been waiting patiently, but now plan to cross into the US now that Title 42 has been extended.
In the border city of Juárez, asylum seekers say they risked everything and spent every penny they had to get to the United States.
A woman showed the New York Post injuries on her feet after walking hundreds of miles to the border and a man showed a monkey bite sustained during his perilous journey through the treacherous jungles of Central America to reach the border.
They are among the 20,000 people the mayor of neighboring El Paso says are waiting to arrive in his city when Title 42 ends.
The pandemic-era policy has been in place since 2020 and allows border agents to automatically turn people from certain countries back and send them to Mexico or their country of origin.
Throughout 2022, Venezuelans fleeing their deteriorating economy and failed leaders have flooded the US borders and have been allowed to stay and seek asylum if they make a valid claim.
After Title 42 has been extended, some immigrants plan to take matters into their own hands and cross the border.
Mexico then agreed to receive the Venezuelan migrants expelled from the US in October and was added to the list of Title 42 countries. Since then, its citizens have been kept waiting in Mexico.
As news of the decision to uphold Title 42 spread Tuesday, Venezuelans in Juárez gathered to discuss what it meant for them.
“I want to do things legally; they owe us the right to at least request asylum,” said Carlos Mojollón, speaking about the United States government.
The Venezuelan mechanical engineer hopes to obtain a permit to work in Mexico while he awaits the removal of Title 42, but he is in the minority.
Luz Moztardo, 25, arrived in Juárez five days ago with her husband and two young children ages 1 and 3. They, too, were waiting for Title 42 to expire to turn themselves over to border officials. They left their hotel Tuesday morning, hoping to be in El Paso by nightfall.
With two young children, Moztardo said they would enter without papers if they had to and spoke of their hopes of making it to New York City, where friends are waiting for them.
The number of children fleeing Venezuela underscores the humanitarian crisis at the border, as young children live on donated food and sleep outdoors in subzero temperatures.
Once people rely on cartel-linked traffickers to sneak into the country, which can be incredibly dangerous and carry significant risk, such as traversing six-lane highways or suffocating in trucks packed with other stowaways.
It can also put migrants in debt to cartels and forced to live a life of sex work, being used as drug mules or other crimes.
Title 42 has been used in millions of cases, and in fiscal year 2022 alone it was used to keep around 40% of the 2.4 million people who tried to cross the border out of the country.
A federal judge ordered it to expire on December 21, and authorities on both sides of the border prepared for it by recruiting additional troops and border agents, but last-minute appeals led to the policy staying in place until at least February.
The Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of the US Border Patrol, did not mince words Tuesday night about who it thinks should solve the border crisis.
“We will continue to manage the border, but we do so within the constraints of a decades-old immigration system that everyone agrees doesn’t work. We need Congress to pass the comprehensive immigration reform legislation that President Biden proposed the day he took office,” the agency said in a statement.