MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th May, 2023) The number of illegal crossings of the US border by migrants has gone over 10,000 daily this week, an all-time record, The Washington Post reported on Friday.
The sharp increase in illegal crossings is caused by the expiry of immigration statute Title 42, which was imposed by the Trump administration in March 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic in order to prevent the spread of the virus, the report said.
The head of a migrant shelter in Mexican city Ciudad Juarez, Severino Martinez Santiago, said that the migrants that rush to the US's border do not understand what the lifting of Title 42 actually means.
"They are misinformed. They believe that when Title 42 ends, the doors to the United States will be opened, and they can cross... But that is far from the truth. It will be far worse for them," Martinez was quoted in the report as saying.
Title 42, the Trump-era public health emergency order imposed in March 2020, allowed the US government to turn away illegal immigrants at the border to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The United States anticipated a massive surge of migrants would attempt to cross into the country illegally once it was lifted.
Earlier in the day, US Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz told reporters that as the restriction expired last night, up to 65,000 migrants were waiting in northern Mexico to cross into the United States, but he noted those were not unusually high numbers compared to the previous two years.
