The USA expected to lift tonight subway which has blocked access to their territory since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, while this change is causing confusion and anxiety for thousands Immigrants which have been gathered in borders with the Mexico.

Even the US president has admitted that the situation will be “chaotic”. Federal authorities mobilized “more than 24,000 police and law enforcement officers” to the border, in addition to about 4,000 military personnel.

The so-called “Title 42” is set to expire today at 23:59 Washington time (06:59 Greek time on Friday), but crossings of migrants seeking to reach the US are already up, according to Texas border towns Brownsville, Laredo and El Paso.

Border Patrol Agents Association President Brandon Judd noted that more than 10,000 migrants were caught illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border on Monday and Tuesday, a number that exceeded a hypothetical scenario that a top U.S. Border Patrol official made last month. for the period after the expiration of “Title 42”.

“It’s going to be difficult, very difficult,” El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser noted yesterday, Wednesday. “We don’t know what will happen tomorrow, we don’t know what will happen in the next ten days.”

His municipality, El Paso, a big draw, is “preparing for the unknown,” he added.

On the other side of the border, Marta Perez, who arrived there from Guatemala, is waiting with her two daughters, ages 2 and 4. With tears in her eyes, she explains that her husband and one of her sons have been killed and that another of her teenage children is alone in the US.

“Now all I want is to cross the border,” he told AFP from Ciudad Juarez, the Mexican city across the street from the American city of El Paso.

“Very hard”

US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas acknowledged that “the next few days and hours” are likely to be “very difficult”, confirming that authorities are already seeing “an increased number of arrivals in some areas”.

Faced with changes in immigration regulations, rumors spread by traffickers and a complicated online process, the migrants piling up in the Mexican north present a procedural conundrum.

“We don’t know what’s going on,” says Michel from Venezuela, who is in Ciudad Juarez, about 300 meters from the US border. “They’re making things more difficult for us,” he complains, expressing frustration after yet another failed attempt to book an appointment on the CBP One mobile phone app, as he now owes.

Some of them are rushing to cross the border before tonight to apply for asylum, fearing that the change in regulations will prevent them from doing so for five years.

The immigrants who have gathered come mainly from Latin American countries, but also from China, Russia or Turkey.

– Immigration Policy –

The “Title 42” measure, which was put in place to contain the spread of COVID-19, allowed US authorities to immediately deport all immigrants entering the country, including asylum seekers. In a three-year period it was used 2.8 million times.

New asylum restrictions finalized by the US Departments of Justice and Homeland Security will take effect tonight.

Before showing up at the border, asylum seekers, with the exception of unaccompanied minors, must now have made an appointment on a phone app set up by border guards, or have been refused by one of the countries they passed through on their journey to the US to grant them asylum.

Otherwise, their request will be considered illegal and they will be subject to expedited deportation proceedings, barring them from entering the US for five years.

In this hot-button issue, the Democratic administration wants to present a balanced immigration policy, while the Republicans accuse Joe Biden, who will be a candidate again in the 2024 presidential elections, of turning the border into a “sifter”.

To encourage legal migration routes, Washington plans to open around 100 centers abroad in the long term to review files there. The first ones are planned to take place in Colombia and Guatemala.

Republican former US President Donald Trump said today would be a “day of shame”. “You’re going to see millions of people coming into our country,” he told CNN yesterday, suggesting that if he returns to the White House he will bring back a policy of separating families at the border because “when you have that policy, people don’t come.”