Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas discussed what federal border authorities will need once Title 42 comes to an end next month.
Projections show 13,000 to 18,000 people could be apprehended each day when Title 42 ends on May 11, an uptick from the current 5,000 to 6,000 a day. Title 42 has been a statute in effect during the COVID-19 pandemic that prohibited asylum-seekers from applying at ports of entry and meant Border Patrol would immediately expel migrants encountered anywhere else along the border rather than bring them into custody.
ANNA GIARITELLI TALKS ABOUT THE FUTURE OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION ONCE TITLE 42 ENDS
The Border Patrol workforce totes only 19,000 nationwide, but Mayorkas is now requesting Congress allot an additional 350 Border Patrol agents.
“We need resources for it all,” Mayorkas said. “So I just want to be clear that we are working within significant constraints. We need people. We need technology. We need facilities. We need transportation resources. All of the elements of addressing the needs of a large population of people arriving irregularly at our southern border.”
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Jeh Johnson, Department of Homeland Security secretary under former President Barack Obama, said during his time at the department that 1,000 captures a day would “constitute a crisis.” Mayorkas was Johnson’s deputy secretary at the time.
Another recent trend is the increasing amount of fentanyl seizures. There were only two pounds of fentanyl seized in all of 2013 whne Mayorkas was deputy secretary compared to over 10,000 pounds seized last year alone along the ports of entry, per the Washington Examiner’s Anna Giaritelli. Mayorkas said he is focused on stopping the flow of the drug but also the demand for it.
