(TargetLiberty.org) – On Sunday, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas revealed that following the expiration of Title 42, the number of encounters has dropped to half. Title 42 was a pandemic health order which allowed the administration to expel migrants without having to go through the normal asylum process.
In an interview with ABC’s Jonathan Karl on “This Week,” Mayorkas revealed that the United States Border Patrol had witnessed a decrease of 50 percent in the number of encounters at the southern border when compared to the number of people who had entered the border on the days right before the health orders expired.
Title 42 ended on Thursday of last week. Many lawmakers and officials had warned that following the end of the measure, they were expecting to see a surge in the number of people who would attempt to cross the U.S. border. However, officials have now revealed that there has not yet been a surge in the number of encounters or in the migrant levels in the hours and days after the measure expired.
In order to handle the expected surge, the Biden administration had allocated additional resources, 24,000 border agents, military troops and asylum officers to be transported to the Southern border.
During the interview, Mayorkas also opposed the view that the Biden administration’s current immigration policy was in any way similar to the asylum bans under former President Donald Trump. As he stated under the Biden immigration policy those who had not tried to seek asylum in a third country prior to the U.S. would only need to prove a “higher threshold of proof” to qualify for asylum but they were not completely banned from seeking asylum.
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