Migrants rush border ahead of Title 42 expiration, agents overwhelmed

US Border Patrol agents were told this week to begin releasing migrants from overwhelmed holding facilities — as surges of asylum seekers rushed across the border ahead of the expiration of pandemic-related immigration policy Thursday.

Agents were ordered on Wednesday to release migrants from any border sector that reached 125% capacity and give them instructions to appear at an immigration office within 60 days, a US official said.

They were also instructed to facilitate releases if the average time in custody exceeded 60 hours or if 7,000 migrants were taken into custody across the border in just one day.

The move comes as migrants continue to flood the US southern border ahead of the demise of Title 42, which expires at midnight Thursday. 

The Trump-era legislation made it virtually impossible to seek asylum as the country worked to stop the spread of COVID-19. Because the policy eliminated legal consequences for illegal border crossings, it allowed migrants to make multiple attempts in order to stay in the country.

Now, desperate migrants fear that tougher restrictions under Title 8 — which applies to citizens from all countries and has been used alongside Title 42 for the last three years — will jeopardize their chance of staying stateside. 

“What we understand is that they won’t be letting anyone else in,” Pablo, from Venezuela, told the Associated Press on Wednesday.

“That’s the reason for our urgency to cross through the border today.”

Photos from the border show adults and children wading through the Rio Grande and scrambling to shore. One heartbreaking closeup shows a small infant tucked into a suitcase to keep dry.

On Tuesday, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) stopped a record 10,300 migrants, or nearly double March’s daily average of 5,200.

More than 27,000 migrants are also believed to be in CBP custody, an official said, up from 8,600 two months ago.

In the early hours of Thursday, about 400 people were huddled on the banks of the Rio Grande near El Paso, Texas, while members of the state’s National Guard put up wire barriers.

With the end of Title 42, asylum seekers face being banned from entering the US for five years and possible legal repercussions.

“With the changes they are making to the laws, it’s now or never,” Alberto Leon, a Colombia native who is trying to cross from Tijuana into San Diego with his family, said this week.

At a press conference on Tuesday, President Biden admitted that the influx of migrants in the eleventh hour of Title 42 was going to be “chaotic for a while.”

“We’ve gotten overwhelming cooperation from Mexico. We also are in the process of setting up offices in Colombia and other places where you could — or someone seeking asylum can go first. So, it remains to be seen,” he said.

Civic leaders across the US are also facing pressures from surges of migrants to their cities.

On Tuesday, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot declared a state of emergency in response to the number of asylum seekers who arrived in the Windy City over the last year, CBS Chicago reported.

“Sadly, we don’t expect the buses to stop arriving anytime soon,” Lightfoot said of the arrivals that started last August.

On Tuesday, 48 migrants arrived in Chicago on buses deployed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

Abbott, a Republican, previously said he would send “thousands more” migrants to New York City, Chicago, and other sanctuary cities ahead of Title 42’s expiration.

“With the Biden Administration ending Title 42 this Thursday, President Biden is laying down a welcome mat to people across the entire world, saying that the United States border is wide open and it will lead to an incredible amount of people coming across the border illegally,” he claimed on Monday.

“People who just arrive start hearing the stories of others who have been here longer and they start getting alarmed. ‘Oh, you’ve been here for four months. Well, I just got here and I’m going to cross,’” said Carmen Josefina Characo, a Venezuelan woman who arrived in Matamoros, Mexico, with her adult daughter.

The pair is hoping to win a spot to enter the US on the government’s mobile app.

Elías Guerra, 20, passed through on his way to New York City.

“Here it’s comfortable, it’s safe, there’s food, there’s shelter, there’s restrooms,” he said of the church shelter he stayed in for four nights before securing a $58 bus ticket east.

Meanwhile, migrant shelters in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, across from El Paso, Texas, are emptying out as people abandon their beds for a chance to cross the border.

Enrique Valenzuela, who coordinates migrant relief efforts for Chihuahua state, said the Ciudad Juarez shelter population is about half of the nearly 3,000 staying there a few weeks ago.

With Post wires