Migrants could be seen arriving at the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border early Thursday, just hours before President Biden’s administration is scheduled to end Title 42.
Members of the Texas National Guard could be seen patrolling the barbed wire fences of the border barrier in El Paso on Thursday. Maj. Sean Storrud of the Texas National Guard pointed to groups of migrants ranging from a few dozen to well over 200, saying that they were waiting for Title 42 to expire.
Storrud said that few things are likely to change in terms of process at his area of the border, where officials have been operating under Title 8 rather than Title 42. Nevertheless, huge numbers of migrants believe otherwise.
“A lot of them are still waiting there because they just don’t know what’s going to happen when Title 42 ends,” Storrud told Fox News. “They have been fed a lot of misinformation from social media, from the cartels, from well-meaning people. And they’ve got so much information that when we tell them about the consequences of Title 8, they simply don’t know what to believe. But they do know that they’re here now, and they’re willing to wait it out, even knowing after we’ve told them that what they’re doing is illegal.”
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The major says he remains confident that his outfit can maintain control over their section of the border even as Title 42 ends.
“I can tell you that we are prepared. I have excellent soldiers here on the ground. And that’s the other thing I’d like to say. My soldiers are citizen soldiers of the Texas Army National Guard. We’re here defending not just the border of the United States, but the border of Texas, where my soldiers live, and the border of El Paso, where over a third of my soldiers live. So they’re defending their hometown,” he said.
Many signs indicate that there will be a large wave of migrants attempting to flow across the U.S.-Mexico border in the coming days. The Mexican government has tripled the number of travel visas it typically grants to migrants in recent weeks.
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Guatemala has also warned some Texas lawmakers that roughly 80,000 migrants are headed to the border from that country.
New York City has also relaxed its laws guaranteeing shelter for migrants and homeless people in anticipation of the end of Title 42. The city’s leaders have come to expect buses of migrants arriving from Gov. Greg Abbott’s Texas in recent months.