AUSTIN, Texas — Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas insisted ahead of President Joe Biden’s inaugural visit to El Paso next week that the U.S.-Mexico border was “not open” for illegal immigration.
Mayorkas briefed reporters Thursday afternoon about significant forthcoming changes to immigration policies in the coming days and maintained that illegal immigration was not permitted, despite several million illegal crossing attempts since Biden took office two years ago.
"Let me be clear, Title 42 or not, the border is not open," Mayorkas said during the press conference in Washington. "Once the Title 42 public health order is no longer in place, DHS will use its long-standing Title 8 immigration enforcement authorities to process all individuals encountered at the border."
Biden will head to the West Texas city Sunday ahead of his trip to Mexico later next week. El Paso has been the epicenter of the southern border crisis. Since mid-August, more than 90,000 immigrants who illegally crossed the border were not expelled to Mexico, but released downtown and permitted to remain in the United States until future court proceedings.
Single city blocks were filled with hundreds of immigrants living outside during the week leading up to Christmas due to space constraints at facilities run by nongovernmental organizations.
Border Patrol agents were apprehending an average of more than 2,000 illegal immigrants per day in December, making the city ground zero for illegal immigration on the southern border. Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) deployed hundreds of military and state troopers to the border to create a system that funneled people to certain areas so that fewer illegal immigrants would go undetected. Since Dec. 20, encounters of illegal immigrants has drastically dropped, leaving little for Biden to see.
Under the Biden administration, illegal immigrant encounters have soared, totaling 5 million in just under two years — more than in all of the Obama's administration's eight years.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/mayorkas-border-not-open-biden-visit-el-paso
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