The Washington Examiner’s Anna Giaritelli shared the projections for border crossings in the U.S. after Title 42 comes to an end on May 11.
Giaritelli has visited the nation’s various borders 50 times in the last five years in her coverage of the topic. 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.
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As the statute comes to an end, Giaritelli anticipates that fewer migrants will cross the border illegally and more will come through the ports of entry.
“We’re expecting 13,000 to 18,000 people being apprehended each day when Title 42 ends on May 11,” Giaritelli said. “And that’s just the people that Border Patrol says I think are going to surrender to us, that we’re gonna catch. That’s not people who ‘get away,’ who we refer to as got aways.”
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.” Now with Alejandro Mayorkas in his place, a man who was Johnson’s deputy secretary previously, between 5,000 to 6,000 people are apprehended a day, Giaritelli said.
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Meanwhile, the Border Patrol workforce stands at 19,000 and has experienced 17 suicides, a rate that has confounded the federal government and prompted the hire of a suicidologist. Giaritelli personally knew one of the deceased agents, a man named Vinny from Yuma, Arizona.
Since Title 42 was enacted, Giaritelli said there have been 5 million encounters at the border, with about 20% of those being repeat offenders while the remaining 80% were unique encounters.