'Race against Time’: Chaotic scenes at the US-Mexico border as Title 42 expires

FP Staff • May 12, 2023, 17:07:08 IST

Title 42, the pandemic-era public health restriction which was used by the US to curb immigration, ended Friday. Throngs of migrants waded across spring river currents, pushed through thickets to confront a razor-wire-enclosed border

As pandemic-era asylum restrictions known as Title 42 ended early Friday, some migrants waded apprehensively into the Rio Grande, defying officials who shouted for them to turn back, while elsewhere along the US-Mexico border people hunched over cell phones trying to access an appointment app that may change their future. AFP

Immigrants seeking asylum, who were apprehended at the time Title 42 expired, are processed by US Border Patrol agents, after crossing into Arizona from Mexico. President Joe Biden’s administration introduced the new asylum rules in a bid to get asylum-seekers to stop coming across the border illegally by reviving and sharpening pre-pandemic penalties and creating new legal pathways to asylum that aim to cut out unscrupulous smugglers. AFP

Standing amidst exhaust fumes from a Border Patrol bus, immigrants seeking asylum in the United States are processed by US Border Patrol agents after crossing into Arizona from Mexico. Some migrants who had travelled from Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Central America feared that it could be harder for them to stay on US soil with the restrictions lifted. AFP

Members of the US National Guard reinforce a barbed-wire fence along the Rio Grande while migrant people crossed the river. María José Durán, a student from Venezuela, was on the verge of tears as she sat on a riverbank in Matamoros, Mexico. Mexican immigration officials were trying to move migrants to an improvised camp and away from a spot where they could wade across the Rio Grande. AFP

Immigrants seeking asylum, who were apprehended at the time Title 42 expire, board a bus to a U.S. Border Patrol processing centre, after crossing into Arizona from Mexico. AFP

Texas National Guard soldier stands vigil at a makeshift migrant camp near the US-Mexico border fence. From the Mexico side, Texas National Guard members were seen reinforcing another stretch of wire to keep migrants out. AFP

Migrants wait for asylum hearings at the US-Mexico border. Hundreds of migrants lined up next to the border wall in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, were still crossing over Thursday and being received by the US Border Patrol in the hours before the Title 42 restrictions lifted. The numbers were notably lower than in recent days. AFP

Migrants wait at night along the border wall to surrender to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Border Patrol agents for immigration and asylum claim processing before the expiration of Title 42 upon crossing the Rio Grande river from Ciudad Juarez (R) into the United States on the US-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas. AFP

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