(NewsNation) — The city of El Paso declared a state of emergency starting Monday in anticipation of the expiration of Title 42 next week.
Title 42, a pandemic-era border policy put in place by former President Donald Trump’s administration, allowed officials to turn migrants away on public health grounds. But that is set to end on May 11, making some concerned this will lead to more people trying to enter the United States unlawfully.
There were more than 20,000 migrants in custody across the southern border Friday, the Washington Post reported. Meanwhile, Border Patrol says they’re seeing about 7,000 migrant encounters a day.
The Border Patrol Commissioner testified in front of Congress last month saying he fully expects that once Title 42 gets lifted, that number will rise to 10,000 daily encounters.
In El Paso, that means there’ll be more people than local shelters can house. Even now, shelters are at capacity. Migrants can be seen sleeping outside on the sidewalks and in front of churches, with overflow coming by the hundreds into the streets.
That’s where the state of emergency comes in.
El Paso’s, which began at 12:01 a.m. Monday and lasts seven days before going to be ratified by the city council, will help the leaders open up emergency shelters and use federal funds, according to the El Paso Times.
“We are getting prepared now for what we call the unknown,” Mayor Oscar Leeser said, per the Times.
The city is prepping to open two temporary shelters at the vacant middle schools, the newspaper reported, and if necessary, officials plan to use a downtown convention center as well.
However, as the El Paso Times pointed out, El Paso police cannot enforce immigration law — that remains under federal purview.
Other Texas border cities, such as Laredo and Brownsville, have also initiated emergency declarations of their own.
In a statement, Laredo’s Mayor, Dr. Victor Treviño, said his city’s disaster declaration was part of reaching a “balance” with expected border crossings, KERA wrote.
“It’s imperative that we protect the City of Laredo’s limited resources while balancing the treatment and services available to incoming immigrants,” Treviño said. “Therefore, the Emergency Declaration is necessary in light of previous experiences and the current and imminent rise of immigrants arriving at our southern border with the expiration of Title 42.”
This past weekend, chief patrol agent of the El Pasto sector, Anthony “Scott” Good, said there’s a misunderstanding that once Title 42 expires, all migrants in the U.S. will be allowed to stay, and their asylum cases will automatically get the green light.
That’s not the case, though, he added.
“Just being from a poor or impoverished country doesn’t mean that you’re amenable to credible fear,” Good said.
Credible fear is a concept in immigration asylum law where a person needs to demonstrate they have been persecuted or have a “well-founded fear of persecution or harm” because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion in their home country.
Although Title 42 is set to end next Thursday, Border Patrol will still enforce Title 8 measures, which give agents the ability to process and remove migrants who don’t have a legal basis to be in the United States.
“We’re not opening the borders,” Leeser said in The Texas Tribune. “The borders are not open today and they will not be opened on May 12.”