By Ted Hesson, Steve Holland and Jose Luis Gonzalez
WASHINGTON/CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday said COVID-era restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border set to end this week should temporarily stay in place as a Republican legal challenge moves forward, just as the White House had been prepping for an increase in the number of migrant crossings.
Chief Justice John Roberts agreed to keep the restrictions known as Title 42 after a group of states with Republican attorneys general said lifting the measure would saddle them with additional costs if more migrants entered.
A U.S. judge ruled last month that Title 42, which blocks many migrants from seeking asylum, is unlawful and set the order to end on Wednesday, Dec. 21. But the states sought to overturn that decision by intervening in a case originally brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of migrants denied entry under the order.
The Supreme Court gave the parties in the legal dispute until Tuesday at 5 p.m. ET to respond. The temporary order from the nation’s highest court means Title 42 will stay in place until further notice from the court.
The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden had been preparing for Title 42 to end this week and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a press conference Monday that the White House was seeking more than $3 billion from Congress to pay for additional personnel, technology, migrant holding facilities and transportation at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The push for additional resources came as U.S. authorities had been preparing for the possibility of 9,000-14,000 people per day trying to cross into the United States if Title 42 was lifted, around double the current rate.
Title 42, aimed at slowing the spread of COVID-19, was issued in March 2020 under Republican former President Donald Trump, an immigration restrictionist. Biden, a Democrat, kept it in place for more than a year.
The Biden administration has been weighing plans to prepare for Title 42’s end, with government officials privately discussing several Trump-style plans to deter people from crossing, including barring single adults seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last week updated a six-pillar plan that calls for the expanded use of a fast-track deportation process. The revised DHS plan also suggests there could be expansion of legal pathways for migrants to enter the country from abroad, similar to a program launched for Venezuelans in October.
Jean-Pierre stressed that migrants entering illegally could still be removed via other means even if eventually Title 42 goes away.
BORDER CITIES OVERWHELMED
Since Biden took office in January 2021, about half of the roughly 4 million migrants encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border – a record number – have been expelled under Title 42 while the other half have been allowed into the United States to pursue their immigration cases.
Mexico only accepts the return of certain nationalities, including some Central Americans and, more recently, Venezuelans.
For months, El Paso, Texas, has been receiving large groups of asylum-seeking migrants, including many Nicaraguans who cannot be expelled to Mexico. On Saturday, the city’s mayor declared a state of emergency to move migrants from city streets as temperatures have dropped below freezing.
U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar, a Democrat whose South Texas district borders Mexico, has said U.S. border officials told him that an estimated 50,000 people are waiting in Mexico for the chance to cross.
Among those waiting were about 200 Venezuelans who have been sleeping at a church in Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican city across the border from El Paso, in recent weeks in anticipation of the possible end of Title 42.
“We’ve suffered so much since we left,” said Emily Rivas, a Venezuelan woman staying at the church with her husband and two children. “Truly, I am asking from my heart for the opportunity to enter” the United States.
In El Paso, shelters have struggled to house newcomers even as many ultimately are headed to join relatives in other parts of the United States.
Rescue Mission of El Paso, a shelter near the border, last week housed 280 people, far beyond its 190-person capacity, with people sleeping on cots and air mattresses in the chapel, library and conference rooms, said Nicole Reulet, the shelter’s marketing director, in an interview with Reuters.
“We have people where we tell them, ‘We have no room,'” she said. “They beg for a place on the floor.”
(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington and Jose Luis Gonzalez in Ciudad Juarez; Additional reporting by Richard Cowan in Washington and Lizbeth Diaz in Tijuana and by Nate Raymond in Boston ; Editing by Mica Rosenberg and Aurora Ellis)
