Border Patrol Agents Voice Fears Over End of Title 42 Next Month

EXCLUSIVE — Thousands of U.S. Border Patrol agents are bracing for a monumental migration event at the southern border with Mexico that is expected to take place when pandemic policy Title 42 ends just days before Christmas, according to six employees who spoke with the Washington Examiner.

“Title 42 was a cracked dam. We all know that when it breaks, a huge flood is coming. The flood of people coming in at once will cripple our already broken immigration system,” a senior agent in West Texas told the Washington Examiner this week. “Customs and Border Protection will have no other choice but to release virtually everyone.”

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Six Border Patrol employees — from rank-and-file agents on the southern border to those with the top government security clearance at the Washington headquarters — all shared the same expectation, even dread, come Dec. 21, when they will no longer be able to expel illegal immigrants back to Mexico.

“When Title 42 ends we are going to see an already broken immigration system become completely inundated across all sectors. There will be no choice but to prioritize administrative/detainee functions over actual enforcement,” a second Border Patrol agent, who asked not to be identified by location or job title, wrote in a message.

“The only way to achieve this will be to pull line agents off the border and send them to processing,” the second agent continued. “They won’t have any choice but to parole and release as many people as possible to avoid another large scale media event (Del Rio).”

Julio Cortez/AP

The Border Patrol could be looking at as many as 18,000 arrests per day come Dec. 21 — up from the 6,000 apprehended daily amid this crisis. For context, an Obama-era DHS secretary said 1,000 arrests per day constituted a “crisis.” Border Patrol could soon be 18 times over that standard.

“Everyone is anticipating that the flow will be nuts,” a third Border Patrol employee, a senior official at its Washington headquarters, wrote in a message. “The people waiting in Mexico already will be anxious to come in ASAP.”

U.S. border officials have sent illegal immigrants back to Mexico more than 2 million times since February 2021, shortly after Biden took office. While some tried multiple times to enter illegally or were denied the ability to seek asylum at a port because of Title 42, it still means that a ton of people are looking to gain admission, and Title 42 ending means they will not be turned away, but arrested and taken into custody, processed, and likely released and permitted to remain in the U.S.

The 6,000 daily apprehensions since President Joe Biden took office already have agents in a bind, particularly because the Biden administration chose not to detain immigrants in federal immigration facilities pending court appearances. It has resulted in more than 1.5 million people being released into the U.S. rather than being detained. The backlogged immigration courts mean someone released today may not be in court until 2028, all the while living in the U.S. on “parole,” a new legal status that the Biden administration created.

“We expect things to remain overwhelming for our agents,” explained a fourth Border Patrol official, this one also in the top ranks.

Where Border Patrol has space to detain people for several days, it will do so, otherwise “many will be released on their own recognizance due to lack of sufficient detention capacities nationwide,” the same official said.

Noncitizens may cross the border at the direction of smugglers who work for Mexican cartels, who make $5,000 to $50,000 per person depending on how far the journey. Cartels push groups of hundreds of people across at once then move others with criminal records and drugs over the border in a nearby area that is unmanned because agents are responding to the group. Roughly half of all agents have been pulled from the field to transport, process, and care for those in custody.

Matt York/AP

Additional agents stationed on the Canadian border and along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts will be given mandatory orders to deploy to the hardest-hit parts of the Mexico border, according to the third official. Most will be assigned inside facilities, interviewing, caring for, and processing newly apprehended immigrants.

Knowing that a storm is coming has hit some agents hard.

“How do I feel about what’s going to happen? Depressed, unmotivated, and frustrated,” said the first agent from West Texas, who added that leaving the job at this point in a career was not possible.

“When I joined the Army, I took an oath to protect our country from all enemies, both foreign and domestic,” the agent said. “When I joined the Patrol, I took the same oath. Now it seems that we are fighting domestic enemies, not foreign. Who are the domestic enemies? The ones that [are] letting foreigners come in by breaking the law and rewarding them.”

Jae C. Hong/AP

A fifth agent stationed in Arizona said his station takes a dozen agents from the field each shift and brings them inside to process the constant flow of people being brought in. Priority for being in the field is given to agents on horses, bikes, and all-terrain vehicles (ATVs).

“All of these people we can [Title 42] will now have to wait in custody to get processed. Meaning more agents out of the field. Just a bigger strain on agents and resources,” a sixth agent from Texas wrote in a message.

The Washington official said no plan for joint efforts between the Border Patrol and Office of Field Operations stationed at the land ports of entry has been shared. Three other employees said they remain in the dark about how the agency is planning to handle people they apprehend.

“No one has really given us any guidance of expectations on what the end of Title 42 will bring,” said the fifth agent.

Matt York/AP

Following a federal judge’s decision last week that allowed DHS to end Title 42, the Biden administration requested five weeks to prepare a plan on how to walk it back. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan of the District of Columbia accepted the government’s request “with great reluctance.”

A Biden administration official told the Washington Examiner in an email Wednesday that “individuals encountered at the border and without a legal basis to remain in the United States will be subject to prompt removal.”

The official added that the department has worked on speeding up asylum processing times, set up anti-smuggling operations in Mexico and Guatemala, and agreed with 20 other world leaders to manage migration in the Western Hemisphere.

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“As we prepare to transition to the next phase of our work to manage the border in a safe, orderly, and humane way, the Department of Homeland Security will continue to double down on these proven strategies,” the official added.

Despite the efforts that DHS touted, the number of encounters of illegal immigration attempts has remained at the highest levels in Border Patrol’s 98-year history, reaching new heights this fall.