The Title 42 border barrier, which is set to expire the next week, was urged to be kept in place by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) along with every other Republican on the Senate Judiciary panel this week.
McConnell, senior Republican Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC), and nine other Republican senators sent a letter to Biden pleading with him to reconsider his decision to withdraw the Title 42 public health order.
Title 42 is a Trump-era public health directive that allows border officers to promptly deport unlawful border crossers from the United States.
The order will expire on May 11, when the coronavirus-related nationwide health emergency will be lifted.
Senators warned that if the restriction is lifted, the number of illegal migrant contacts might skyrocket to 13,000 each day.
They added, “This is unsustainable and will worsen what is currently a national safety and humanitarian catastrophe at our southern border.”
A local Fox station broadcast a video of “more and more migrants with temporary encampments” erected in the city’s downtown as El Paso, Texas, one of the biggest towns on the border, issued a state of emergency in anticipation of the next week.
The expected uptick came just days after government statistics indicated that illegal migrant interactions, which have topped a mind-boggling five million during Biden’s presidency, had increased for the third month in a row.
According to the senators, fiscal year 2022 saw the largest number of illegal migrant contacts ever recorded, and Title 42 has been a “lifeline… during the most catastrophic border emergency in our lifetimes.”
They stated:
“There is no sign of an end to the unprecedented flood of encounters with illegal aliens.” We fear to contemplate how much worse the border crisis would have been during the last three years if Title 42 had not served as a deterrent. The power has been utilized 2.7 million times since the original decree was issued in March 2020.”
Title 42, according to the Biden administration and open borders proponents, denies unlawful border crossers the right to seek asylum.
