The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it will terminate Title 42 in May. The policy allows border officers to turn away migrants and asylum seekers because of the pandemic, and Attorney General Mark Brnovich has already filed suit to keep it in place. Brnovich announced on Monday that he was joining his counterparts in Louisiana and Missouri to challenge the roll back.
As the CDC's May 23 end date gets closer, community groups along the border are preparing for the change.
Alex Bejarano is with the Regional Center for Border Health, which provides COVID-19 tests, vaccines and transportation to asylum seekers after they’ve been processed by the Border Patrol in the Yuma area.
He says the number of migrants testing positive for COVID is low and most already have their vaccines. His group is helping around 300 people a day now.
"Now that COVID numbers have gone down, we just want to know ... what kind of support we’re going to get if we’re processing more than we already are," he said.
Bejarano says the Yuma area doesn't have the infrastructure to respond to humanitarian needs on their own. There is no large airport and no central bus route, so migrants who are released there are usually transported to the Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix to connect with family elsewhere in the U.S and await their asylum hearings. Bejarano's group charters buses for the trip and is the only one carrying out that service in Yuma.
He says they are in touch with federal agencies like FEMA to see how they will be reimbursed for those expenses. But they'd like more clarity on what's next.
Most migrants in Yuma are already not subject to Title 42. Customs and Border Protection data shows of more than 20,000 people apprehended there in February, fewer than 2,000 were expelled under the protocol. That's because not all nationalities are eligible for Title 42 and permissions can differ from port to port.
But the protocol restricted people's ability to apply for asylum at the border, a right mandated by U.S. and federal law. The Biden administration says after two years of those restrictions, migration is likely to go up. Officials say they’ll respond with a surge of additional resources and temporary processing facilities.
