Just before Title 42 was set to expire at midnight on May 11, immigration advocates represented by the American Civil Liberties Union filed a legal challenge to the new asylum bars, claiming they violate US laws and international agreements.
Advocates argue the new regulation, put in place by Democratic President Joe Biden to curb illegal crossings, resembles restrictions issued by former President Donald Trump, his Republican predecessor. The rights groups successfully blocked the Trump rules in court and asked the same California-based judge to block these as well.
US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas defended the Biden regulation in a series of television interviews Friday morning, saying it aims to encourage migrants to enter using legal pathways rather than crossing illegally. “It’s going to be a tough transition,” he told MSNBC.
Chaotic scenes unfolded of migrants scrambling to enter the country on Thursday before Title 42 expired and the new rule went in to effect. The regulation presumes most migrants are ineligible for asylum if they passed through other nations without first seeking protection elsewhere, or if they failed to use legal pathways for US entry, which Biden has expanded.
Thousands of migrants have waded through rivers, climbed walls and scrambled up embankments onto U.S. soil in recent days, hoping to be processed before midnight.
Some migrants turned themselves in to border officials. Others tried to cross undetected. In Matamoros, Mexico, on Thursday afternoon groups crossed the Rio Grande River in chin-high water. Some carried tiny babies and bags of belongings above their heads to make it into Brownsville, Texas.
