As Title 42 Nears End, El Paso Declares Emergency over Influx of Asylum Seekers

The Democratic mayor of El Paso, Texas, has declared a state of emergency over concerns the city won't be able to provide shelter and resources to the thousands of asylum seekers arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. This comes as the Biden administration is expected on Wednesday to stop enforcing Title 42, the Trump-era pandemic policy that has been used by the U.S. government to block over 2 million migrants from seeking asylum in the country. Many asylum seekers now at the border are sleeping outdoors in freezing temperatures while the infrastructure to welcome them is sorely lacking, says Fernando Garcia, the founder and executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights based in El Paso. This is what I consider the perfect storm happening right now at the border," he says. If we don't have long-term fixes, if we don't have immigration reform fixing the asylum process, which has been broken and damaged by the previous administration, I think we are going to continue seeing these crises."