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Tag: El Paso

  • Don’t try to make sense of Biden’s border policy | CNN Politics

    Don’t try to make sense of Biden’s border policy | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden’s immigration policy is confusing and full of contradictions.

    Make some sense of these developments:

    Biden …

    • made his first visit to the border as president on Sunday, but failed to see any migrants …
    • is expanding former President Donald Trump’s border policy, known as Title 42, even though Biden says he doesn’t like it …
    • asked courts to end that Trump-era policy, but seemingly had no workable plan for when they nearly did …
    • has traveled to Mexico City for a summit with North American leaders, but his White House is making very clear they aren’t anticipating any progress on the border crisis …
    • watches on as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, in particular, freelances his own border security with increasingly elaborate stunts to argue the border is too porous. The latest involves adding a wall of shipping containers to the border at El Paso, Texas.

    How did Biden visit an aid center at the border during an admitted crisis and fail to encounter any actual migrants?

    “There just weren’t any at the center when he arrived,” a senior administration official said in Priscilla Alvarez and MJ Lee’s report for CNN. “Completely coincidental. They haven’t had any today.”

    Granted, border crossings have dropped in the new year.

    But Alvarez and Lee point to on-the-ground reporting from CNN’s Rosa Flores that “hundreds of migrants, including children, were living on the street after crossing into the United States in El Paso. And nearly 1,000 additional migrants were in federal custody in detention facilities in El Paso on Sunday, according to the City of El Paso’s migrant dashboard.”

    Abbott hand-delivered a message to Biden on the tarmac in El Paso complaining Biden hasn’t paid enough attention to the border. The strongly worded letter was also posted on Abbott’s website.

    “Your visit avoids the sites where mass illegal immigration occurs and sidesteps the thousands of angry Texas property owners whose lives have been destroyed by your border policies,” Abbott wrote.

    Rather than meet with migrants, Biden focused on meeting with border enforcement personnel, including in a quick stop alongside an iron fence between the US and Mexico. Reporters were kept at a distance. Read the full report from Alvarez and Lee.

    What’s no coincidence is the administration’s hard-to-follow immigration policy.

    As part of the new immigration plan announced last week, Biden said the US would accept up to 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela into a humanitarian “parole program,” but then also made clear Title 42 would be applied in a new way, continuing the policy of turning away more people at the border.

    The idea is to get people to apply legally from home rather than just show up at the border.

    CNN’s Catherine Shoichet does an admirable job of trying to keep track of Biden’s relationship with Title 42, the Trump-era pandemic policy written by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, not Congress, and which has morphed into de facto US immigration policy.

    It allows the government to turn away more migrants at the border. When it appeared Title 42 would lapse at the end of 2022, a mass of migrants gathered at the border in anticipation.

    “Officials have claimed court decisions left them with no other choice, but they’ve also chosen to expand the policy beyond any court’s order,” Shoichet writes.

    Take a look at her timeline of the Biden administration’s evolution on Title 42. The recent expansion of the policy came after the Supreme Court required officials to maintain it.

    A group of Democratic lawmakers said they were “deeply disappointed” in the new version of the policy, which they argued would “do nothing to restore the rule of law at the border.”

    “Instead, it will increase border crossings over time and further enrich human smuggling networks,” Sens. Cory Booker and Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico and Alex Padilla of California wrote in a joint statement.

    It’s a concern Biden actually shares. Even though he is essentially expanding the policy, the president also acknowledged last week his move could makes things worse because it almost encourages people turned away at the border to try repeatedly to enter the US.

    White House officials are tamping down expectations for Biden’s meeting with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is often referred to in shorthand as AMLO.

    Mexico recently agreed to accept up to 30,000 migrants per month from the four countries included in the new policy who attempt to enter the US and are turned back.

    AMLO has suggested Mexico could accept more. But national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the policy will need time to play out before anyone should expect tweaks.

    While it’s hard to make sense of Biden’s border policy, it’s important to remember the systemic dysfunction of the US border debate that has paralyzed Congress for decades.

    The issue of immigration is top of mind for Republicans who now control the House, but it’s not at all clear there will be any movement toward the kind of bipartisan and comprehensive efforts that could change things.

    Meantime, Biden will be left to the existing policies, even if they were written under the previous administration and kept in place, for now, by the Supreme Court.

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  • Biden inspects US-Mexico border in face of GOP criticism

    Biden inspects US-Mexico border in face of GOP criticism

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    EL PASO, Texas (AP) — President Joe Biden walked a muddy stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border and inspected a busy port of entry Sunday on his first trip to the region after two years in office, a visit shadowed by the fraught politics of immigration as Republicans blame him for record numbers of migrants crossing into the country.

    At his first stop, the president observed as border officers in El Paso demonstrated how they search vehicles for drugs, money and other contraband. Next, he traveled to a dusty street with abandoned buildings and walked along a metal border fence that separated the U.S. city from Ciudad Juarez.

    His last stop was the El Paso County Migrant Services Center — but there were no migrants in sight. As he learned about the services offered there, he asked an aid worker, “If I could wave the wand, what should I do?” The answer was not audible.

    Biden’s nearly four-hour visit to El Paso was highly controlled. He encountered no migrants except when his motorcade drove alongside the border and about a dozen were visible on the Ciudad Juárez side. His visit did not include time at a Border Patrol station, where migrants who cross illegally are arrested and held before their release. He delivered no public remarks.

    The visit seemed designed to showcase a smooth operation to process legal migrants, weed out smuggled contraband and humanely treat those who have entered illegally, creating a counter-narrative to Republicans’ claims of a crisis situation equivalent to an open border.

    But his visit was likely do little to quell critics from both sides, including immigrant advocates who accuse him of establishing cruel policies not unlike those of his hard-line predecessor, Donald Trump.

    In a sign of the deep tensions over immigration, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, handed Biden a letter as soon as he touched down in the state that said the “chaos” at the border was a “direct result” of the president’s failure to enforce federal laws. Biden later took the letter out of his jacket pocket during his tour, telling reporters, “I haven’t read it yet.”

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy dismissed Biden’s visit as a “photo op,” saying on Twitter that the Republican majority would hold the administration “accountable for creating the most dangerous border crisis in American history.”

    El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego welcomed Biden’s visit, but said a current lull in arrivals prevented the president from seeing how large the group of newcomers has been.

    “He didn’t get to see the real difficulties,” said Samaniego, who was in the local delegation that greeted Biden. “It was good that he was here. It’s a first step. But we still need to do more and have more time with him.”

    Elsewhere in El Paso where Biden did not visit, hundreds of migrants were gathered Sunday outside the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, where they have been sleeping outdoors and receiving three meals a day from faith groups and other humanitarian organizations.

    The migrants included several pregnant women, including Karla Sainz, 26, eight months along. She was traveling in a small group that included her 2-year-old son, Joshua. Sainz left her three other children back home in Venezuela with her mother.

    “I would ask President Biden to help me with a permission or something so we can work and continue,” she said.

    Juan Tovar, 32, one of several people in her group, suggested he also had political reasons for leaving his home country.

    “Socialism is the worst,” he said. “In Venezuela, they kill us, they torture us, we can’t talk bad about the government. We are worse off than in Cuba.”

    Noengris Garcia, also eight months pregnant, was traveling with her husband, teen son and the small family dog from the tiny state of Portuguesa, Venezuela, where she operated a food stall.

    “We don’t want to be given money or a house,” said Garcia, 39. “We just want to work.”

    Asked what he’s learned by seeing the border firsthand and speaking with the officers who work along it, Biden said: “They need a lot of resources. We’re going to get it for them.”

    El Paso is currently the biggest corridor for illegal crossings, in large part due to Nicaraguans fleeing repression, crime and poverty in their country. They are among migrants from four countries who are now subject to quick expulsion under new rules enacted by the Biden administration in the past week that drew strong criticism from immigration advocates.

    Biden’s recent policy announcements on border security and his visit to the border were aimed in part at blunting the impact of upcoming investigations into immigration promised by House Republicans. But any enduring solution will require action by the sharply divided Congress, where multiple efforts to enact sweeping changes have failed in recent years.

    From Texas, Biden traveled south to Mexico City, where he and the leaders of Mexico and Canada will gather on Monday and Tuesday for a North American leaders summit. Immigration is among the items on the agenda. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador met Biden at the airport Sunday night and joined him in the presidential limousine for the ride to Biden’s hotel.

    The numbers of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has risen dramatically during Biden’s first two years in office. There were more than 2.38 million stops during the year that ended Sept. 30, the first time the number topped 2 million. The administration has struggled to clamp down on crossings, reluctant to take measures that would resemble those of Trump’s administration.

    The policy changes announced this past week are Biden’s biggest move yet to contain illegal border crossings and will turn away tens of thousands of migrants arriving at the border. At the same time, 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela will get the chance to come to the U.S. legally as long as they travel by plane, get a sponsor and pass background checks.

    The U.S. will also turn away migrants who do not seek asylum first in a country they traveled through en route to the U.S. Migrants are being asked to complete a form on a phone app so that they they can go to a port of entry at a pre-scheduled date and time.

    Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters aboard Air Force One that the administration is trying to “incentivize a safe and orderly way and cut out the smuggling organizations,” saying the policies are “not a ban at all” but an attempt to protect migrants from the trauma that smuggling can create.

    The changes were welcomed by some, particularly leaders in cities where migrants have been massing. But Biden was excoriated by immigrant advocate groups, which accused him of taking measures modeled after those of the former president. Administration officials disputed that characterization.

    For all of his international travel over his 50 years in public service, Biden has not spent much time at the U.S.-Mexico border.

    The only visit that the White House could point to was Biden’s drive by the border while he was campaigning for president in 2008. He sent Vice President Kamala Harris to El Paso in 2021, but she was criticized for largely bypassing the action, because El Paso wasn’t the center of crossings that it is now.

    Trump, who made hardening immigration a signature issue, traveled to the border several times.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Andres Leighton in El Paso, Texas; Anita Snow in Phoenix; Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.

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  • CBS Weekend News, January 8, 2023

    CBS Weekend News, January 8, 2023

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    CBS Weekend News, January 8, 2023 – CBS News


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    Supporters of Brazil’s Bolsonaro storm Congress, other buildings; Student-athlete pays off sister’s student loans

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  • El Paso shelter says video of officer slamming person on ground shows ‘excessive force’ | CNN

    El Paso shelter says video of officer slamming person on ground shows ‘excessive force’ | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A homeless shelter in El Paso, Texas, released a video showing what the group said was Customs and Border Protection officials apprehending a person outside of its welcome center.

    The Opportunity Center for the Homeless posted the surveillance video, which shows someone who appears to be in law enforcement pushing the person up to the teal windows at the entrance of the building and then slamming the person to the ground and handcuffing them.

    Another person who appears to be in law enforcement stands over them.

    The group says the surveillance video was taken at 11:50 a.m. on January 6.

    It is unclear what led up to the incident. CNN reached out to the Opportunity Center for the Homeless Sunday night to inquire about the person’s whereabouts or condition following the January 6 incident and whether there was any additional video taken before or after the footage that was shared on social media.

    Opportunity Center for the Homeless founder Ray Tullius issued a statement saying, “Through the years, the Opportunity Center for the Homeless has had a respectful and long-standing working relationship with law enforcement officials in the community.

    “[On Friday], an individual receiving services at the Welcome Center, located at 201 E. 9th Avenue, was apprehended in front of the facility by Customs and Border Protection officials with what seems to us to be excessive force.

    “To our knowledge, this is an isolated incident. However, it raises our concerns for the well-being of the individual taken into custody and all the guests receiving services in our homeless programs. As we have done it for the last twenty-nine years, the Opportunity Center for the Homeless will continue to extend a helping hand to those in need of help,” the statement reads.

    In a statement, US Customs and Border Protection said its Office of Professional Responsibility is reviewing the incident.

    “Although, at the moment we do not have all the details of what occurred during this incident, CBP takes all allegations of misconduct seriously, investigates thoroughly, and holds employees accountable when policies are violated,” the agency said.

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  • Face The Nation: Markarova, Escobar, King

    Face The Nation: Markarova, Escobar, King

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    Face The Nation: Markarova, Escobar, King – CBS News


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    Missed the second half of the show? The latest on President Biden visiting El Paso, Texas; how cutting aid to Ukraine would be “catastrophic”; and Ukrainian ambassador to U.S. Oksana Marakova says Kyiv needs “even more” military aid to defeat Russia.

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  • Biden heads to the border for the first time as president | CNN Politics

    Biden heads to the border for the first time as president | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden is heading to the US-Mexico border on Sunday on the heels of major policy announcements and following relentless calls from Republicans who believe the trip is overdue.

    The trip to the border – the first for Biden since he took office – comes as the administration wrestles with a growing number of migrants, overwhelming federal and local resources. Republicans, some border-district Democrats in Congress and even Democratic mayors have criticized Biden for failing to address record levels of border crossings.

    With his visit to El Paso, Texas, on Sunday, Biden is seizing on an issue that’s been a political liability for his administration, while calling on Congress to overhaul the US immigration system to meet current needs.

    But the patchwork of policies put in place by the administration to manage the border so far has often put Biden at odds with his own allies who argue that the administration’s approach is too enforcement heavy.

    “It’s enraging and sad to see a Democratic administration make it harder for vulnerable people to seek asylum all because they’re scared of angry MAGA voters on this issue,” a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus told CNN, responding to the latest policy announcements.

    Previewing the trip, a White House official said the president will “meet with federal, state, and local officials and community leaders who have been critical partners in managing the new migration challenge impacting the entire Western Hemisphere with record numbers of people fleeing political oppression and gang violence in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Cuba.” The president is scheduled to spend about three hours on the ground.

    Biden will evaluate border enforcement operations, touring the Bridge of the Americas Port of Entry alongside Customs and Border Protection officers, members of Congress and local officials and law enforcement.

    The White House said it’s the busiest port in El Paso and received $600 million under bipartisan infrastructure law.

    Biden will then visit the El Paso County Migrant Services Center to meet with local officials, faith leaders and non-governmental organizations “who have been critical to supporting migrants fleeing political oppression and economic collapse in their home countries.”

    The official said the president will also spend time with local business leaders to hear about the economic impact of migration in the region and worker shortages.

    Biden will be joined by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas; Texas Reps. Veronica Escobar, Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, all Democrats; El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser; El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego; and additional community and business leaders.

    Mayorkas on Sunday defended Biden’s approach to addressing the migrant surge at the southern border, saying the administration was operating in a humane but necessary way.

    “We are dealing with in a broken immigration system that Congress has failed to repair for decades, and there is unanimity with respect to that reality,” Mayorkas told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “This Week,” while attributing the surge to regional displacement impacting the entire Western Hemisphere.

    “We want individuals who qualify for relief under our laws to come to the United States in a safe and orderly way. And that is why we are building lawful pathways so people do not have to place their lives and their life savings in the hands of ruthless smugglers,” he said.

    Mass movement across the Western Hemisphere has posed an urgent challenge for Biden, who in his first few months in office faced a surge of unaccompanied migrant children at the border and later, the abrupt arrival of thousands of Haitian migrants.

    Since 2021, there have been more than 2.4 million arrests along the US-Mexico border, according to US Customs and Border Protection data. That includes people who have attempted to cross more than once. Many have also been turned away under a Trump-era Covid restriction known as Title 42 that allows federal authorities to expel migrants quickly, citing the Covid-19 pandemic.

    The arrival of thousands of migrants has strained border communities, including El Paso. The city has prided itself on being a welcoming place for migrants but has been overwhelmed in recent months with the sudden arrival of thousands of migrants, straining local resources and prompting pleas for federal assistance.

    Anxiety about the scheduled end of Title 42 prompted thousands of migrants in recent weeks to turn themselves in to border authorities or to cross into the United States illegally in a very short period.

    The policy was scheduled to lift last month, but a Supreme Court ruling kept the rule in place while legal challenges play out in court.

    Federal data shared with CNN indicates that migrant encounters in El Paso have dropped drastically since December, when thousands crossed on a daily basis.

    There have been less than 700 daily encounters on average over the last few days, compared to nearly 2,500 at its peak in December, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

    DHS said it deployed 100 additional personnel to the El Paso region in December, and this week, the department will open another temporary facility to process migrants. Shelters in Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, have also seen a decrease in migrants, DHS said.

    Biden has said he wanted to wait until he knew an outcome in the Title 42 legal machinations before traveling to the border and accused Republicans calling for him to travel there of playing political games.

    “They haven’t been serious about this at all,” he said.

    El Paso has been at the center of the immigration debate dating back to the Trump administration, which piloted the controversial family separation policy in the region.

    While Biden has condemned Trump-era immigration policies, his own administration has wrestled with striking a balance between enforcement and holding up its humanitarian promises.

    In El Paso, Biden will be faced with the history of his predecessor and the challenges he faces as the administration tries to stem the flow of mass migration in the hemisphere.

    He’ll also be visiting a state whose governor has been a fierce critic of the Biden administration’s immigration policies. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who already criticized the president’s upcoming visit on Twitter, has sent thousands of migrants on buses to Democratic-led cities and deployed the National Guard along the Texas-Mexico border, including in El Paso.

    In recent months, the El Paso sector has surpassed the Rio Grande Valley sector in migrant arrests. RGV has historically been one of the busiest sectors for border crossings. The El Paso sector patrols 268 miles of international border.

    Last November, border authorities encountered more than 53,000 migrants in the El Paso sector, according to the latest available data from US Customs and Border Protection.

    Last year, El Paso – whose mayor, Leeser, is a Democrat – began sending migrant buses to New York City, following in the footsteps of Republican governors, to try to get people to their destination and decongest the city. That effort has since stopped.

    Escobar, who represents El Paso, said in a tweet that she’s “excited” to welcome Biden to the city. While she didn’t place a big emphasis on Biden visiting the border, she made clear she welcomed it in recent weeks and urged the federal government to provide assistance to the city.

    John Kirby, the National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, said that the president is looking forward to seeing firsthand the situation on the border ahead of the North American Leaders’ Summit in Mexico City.

    “The President is very much looking forward to seeing for himself first-hand what the border security situation looks like, particularly in El Paso. He’s very much also interested in getting to talk to Customs and Border Patrol agents on the ground who are actually involved in this mission to get their first-hand perspectives of it,” Kirby told reporters Friday.

    Ahead of Biden’s border visit, the administration also announced plans to expand the policy and include Haitians, Nicaraguans and Cubans while it remains in place. Title 42 has so far largely applied to migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Venezuela.

    The announcements Biden made Thursday reflect the administration’s effort to prepare for the end of Title 42, along with putting in place programs to manage the surge of migrants that have coincided with the anticipated end of the rule.

    The administration will now accept up to 30,000 migrants per month from Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela under a humanitarian parole program geared toward those nationalities. Those who do not come to the US under that program may be expelled to Mexico under Title 42.

    The announcement drew criticism from immigrant advocates and Democrats who argued the policies will put migrants who are seeking asylum in harm’s way.

    “The expansion of Title 42 to include Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans is a broken promise,” said Dylan Corbett, executive director of Hope Border Institute, in a statement. Hope Border Institute has been assisting migrants who have arrived in El Paso.

    “Border communities will continue to work hard to pick up the broken pieces of our nation’s immigration system and show that our future lies not with expulsion and deportation, but with humanity and hope,” he added.

    Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus grilled top Biden officials, including Mayorkas, over the newly announced border policies in a call Thursday, according to two sources in attendance.

    Members felt blindsided by the new policies and frustrated with the lack of engagement prior to their rollout, the sources said.

    “It was really heated,” one source said, adding that members were “livid” that the administration didn’t consult with them ahead of time. The call included officials with the Department of Homeland Security and the White House.

    One of the sources of tension during the call was a new asylum regulation that could bar migrants who are seeking asylum in the United States from doing so if they passed through another country on their way to the US-Mexico border. The restrictions are reminiscent of limits rolled out during the Trump administration, though officials have rejected the comparison.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Escobar previews Biden’s trip to southern border

    Escobar previews Biden’s trip to southern border

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    Escobar previews Biden’s trip to southern border – CBS News


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    Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas says President Biden is visiting El Paso, Texas, to meet with those who are “actually doing the work on the ground day to day.”

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  • GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales criticizes White House for handling of Biden border trip

    GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales criticizes White House for handling of Biden border trip

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    GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales criticizes White House for handling of Biden border trip – CBS News


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    GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas says the White House denied his request to accompany President Biden on his visit to El Paso, which is in Gonzales’ district.

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  • Biden heads to Texas for firsthand look at situation along U.S.-Mexico border

    Biden heads to Texas for firsthand look at situation along U.S.-Mexico border

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    Washington — President Biden is heading to the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday, his first trip there as president after two years of hounding by Republicans who have hammered him as soft on border security while the number of migrants crossing spirals.

    Mr. Biden is due to spend a few hours in El Paso, Texas, currently the biggest corridor for illegal crossings, due in large part to Nicaraguans fleeing repression, crime and poverty in their country. They are among migrants from four countries who are now subject to quick expulsion under new rules enacted by the Biden administration in the past week.

    The president is expected to meet with border officials to discuss migration as well as the increased trafficking of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, which are driving skyrocketing numbers of overdoses in the U.S.

    Mr. Biden will visit the El Paso County Migrant Services Center and meet with nonprofits and religious groups that support migrants arriving to the U.S. It is not clear whether Mr. Biden will talk to any migrants.

    “The president’s very much looking forward to seeing for himself firsthand what the border security situation looks like,” said John Kirby, White House national security spokesman. “This is something that he wanted to see for himself.”

    Mr. Biden’s announcement on border security and his visit to the border are aimed in part at quelling the political noise and blunting the impact of upcoming investigations into immigration promised by House Republicans. But any enduring solution will require action by the sharply divided Congress, where multiple efforts to enact sweeping changes have failed in recent years.

    Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas offered faint praise for Mr. Biden’s decision to visit the border, and even that was notable in the current political climate.

    “He must take the time to learn from some of the experts I rely on the most, including local officials and law enforcement, landowners, nonprofits, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s officers and agents, and folks who make their livelihoods in border communities on the front lines of his crisis,” Cornyn said.

    Texas National Guard soldiers stand guard at the U.S.-Mexico border on Jan. 7, 2023, as viewed from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
    Texas National Guard soldiers stand guard at the U.S.-Mexico border on Jan. 7, 2023, as viewed from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

    John Moore/Getty Images


    From El Paso, Mr. Biden will continue south to Mexico City, where he and the leaders of Mexico and Canada will gather on Monday and Tuesday for a North American leaders summit. Immigration is among the items on the agenda.

    In El Paso, where migrants congregate at bus stops and in parks before traveling on, border patrol agents have stepped up security before the president’s visit.

    “I think they’re trying to send a message that they’re going to more consistently check people’s documented status, and if you have not been processed they are going to pick you up,” said Ruben Garcia of the Annunciation House aid group in El Paso.

    Migrants and asylum-seekers fleeing violence and persecution have increasingly found that protections in the United States are available primarily to those with money or the savvy to find someone to vouch for them financially.

    Jose Natera, a Venezuelan migrant in El Paso who hopes to seek asylum in Canada, said he has no prospects for finding a U.S. sponsor and that he’s now reluctant to seek asylum in the U.S. because he’s afraid of being sent to Mexico.

    Mexico “is a terrible country where there is crime, corruption, cartels and even the police persecute you,” he said. “They say that people who think about entering illegally won’t have a chance, but at the same time I don’t have a sponsor. … I came to this country to work. I didn’t come here to play.”

    The numbers of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has risen dramatically during Mr. Biden’s first two years in office. There were more than 2.38 million stops during the year that ended Sept. 30, the first time the number topped 2 million. The administration has struggled to clamp down on crossings, reluctant to take hard-line measures that would resemble those of the Trump administration.

    The policy changes announced this past week are Mr. Biden’s biggest move yet to contain illegal border crossings and will turn away tens of thousands of migrants arriving at the border. At the same time, 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela will get the chance to come to the U.S. legally as long as they travel by plane, get a sponsor and pass background checks.

    The U.S. will also turn away migrants who do not seek asylum first in a country they traveled through en route to the U.S.

    The changes were welcomed by some, particularly leaders in cities where migrants have been massing. But Mr. Biden was excoriated by immigrant advocate groups, which accused him of taking measures modeled after those of the former president.

    “I do take issue with comparing us to Donald Trump,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, pointing to some of his most maligned policies, including the separation of migrant children from their parents.

    “This is not that president,” she said.

    For all of his international travel over his 50 years in public service, Mr. Biden has not spent much time at the U.S.-Mexico border.

    The only visit that the White House could point to was his drive by the border while he was campaigning for president in 2008. He sent Vice President Kamala Harris to El Paso in 2021, but she was criticized for largely bypassing the action, because El Paso wasn’t the center of crossings that it is now.

    President Barack Obama made a 2011 trip to El Paso, where he toured border operations and the Paso Del Norte international bridge, but he was later criticized for not going back as tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors crossed into the U.S. from Mexico.

    Trump, who made hardening immigration a signature issue, traveled to the border several times. During one visit, he crammed into a small border station to inspect cash and drugs confiscated by agents. During a trip to McAllen, Texas, then the center of a growing crisis, he made one of his most-often repeated claims, that Mexico would pay to build a border wall.

    American taxpayers ended up footing the bill after Mexican leaders flatly rejected the idea.

    “NO,” Enrique Peña Nieto, then Mexico’s president, tweeted in May 2018. “Mexico will NEVER pay for a wall. Not now, not ever. Sincerely, Mexico (all of us).”

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  • Body armor shields Border Patrol agent struck by gunfire

    Body armor shields Border Patrol agent struck by gunfire

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    SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A Border Patrol agent wearing body armor was struck by gunfire but avoided serious injury Thursday while confronting the occupants of a vehicle suspected of migrant smuggling in New Mexico, federal authorities said.

    Six people were taken into custody after the vehicle later crashed, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said. The agency added that the agent was shot in the chest multiple times and was released after a medical examination.

    The officer, who was not identified, had returned fire as a vehicle sped away on a rural state highway north of Hatchita.

    “The fleeing vehicle was involved in a rolled over accident a few miles down the road and agents took six persons into custody,” according to the statement.

    It said two of those in custody were flown to a trauma center in El Paso, Texas, for treatment. Their conditions and identities were not immediately released.

    New Mexico State Police officers were assisting in an investigation, which also involved the FBI, according to State Police Lt. Mark Soriano.

    Immigration and border enforcement have come under increasd scrutiny in recent weeks. On Thursday, Joe Biden disclosed he would make his first visit as president to the U.S. border with Mexico at El Paso. He said details were being worked out for a visit in connection with his meeting next week in Mexico City with leaders of Mexico and Canada.

    Biden also announced Thursday that the U.S. would immediately begin turning away Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans who cross the border from Mexico illegally, expand on an existing effort to stop Venezuelans attempting to enter the U.S.

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  • In troubled Mexico prison, inmates ruled their cell blocks

    In troubled Mexico prison, inmates ruled their cell blocks

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    MEXICO CITY — A violent prison break in which 30 inmates escaped and 17 people — mostly guards — were killed has revealed a shocking level of self-rule by prisoners inside the prison in the northern Mexico border city of Ciudad Juarez.

    Not only were criminals able to sneak guns, drugs and luxury goods into prison Number 3, they actually held the keys to some sections of the facility, which is located across the border from El Paso, Texas.

    “It was evident that the inmates themselves were practically in charge of security, and that on some cell blocks they had the keys to common areas, like classrooms or cafeterias,” said Néstor Manuel Armendáriz, the president of the Human Rights Commission in the northern state of Chihuahua.

    Searches after Sunday’s uprising and jail break turned up 10 “VIP” cells outfitted with televisions and other comforts. One even had a safe filled with cash. Authorities also found cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, fentanyl and marijuana inside the prison, and they found 14 guns just outside.

    But Armendáriz said supposed searches in 2021 didn’t find any of that.

    Ten of the dead were prison guards who were attacked by gunmen who arrived early Sunday in armored vehicles and fired on the entrance and inside dormitories. The seven other dead included two policemen and five suspected attackers.

    The director of the prison was fired on Tuesday, and 191 inmates considered high-risk were transferred out of the over-crowded prison.

    The inmates who escaped have been identified as members of the Mexicles gang; the Mexicles’ leader, who was serving a sentence for murder and other crimes, was among the fugitives. The Mexicles have been one of Juarez’s main gangs for decades and for many years were known to work with the Sinaloa Cartel.

    At the time of the jail break, prison Number 3 held 4,000 inmates, 23% more than it was designed to hold. As is common in Mexican prisons, people awaiting trial — 90% of inmates at the Ciudad Juarez facility — are mixed in with convicted criminals.

    Despite the prison’s long history of problems, authorities prefer to look the other way, said Saskia Niño de Rivera, who leads the incarceration reform group Reinserta.

    “Security is totally politicized, because the prisons don’t win you political points,” Niño de Rivera.

    The problem is particularly sensitive in Ciudad Juarez, where local gangs work for drug cartels and any violence inside prisons can quickly spill out onto the streets of the city.

    That happened in August when a riot inside the same state prison spread to the streets of Juarez in violence and left 11 people dead.

    She said Sunday’s riot “is a clear example of what is occurring in a large number of Mexican prisons, which are completely forgotten by the authorities and which are completely out of control.”

    In 2016, 49 inmates were killed in a riot at the notorious Topo Chico prison in the northern border state of Nuevo Leon. Investigators found the prison to be full of contraband and weapons. The state government finally closed it in 2019.

    Mexico has a prison population of some 226,000 people, many held in overcrowded conditions in prisons without sufficient guards. The problem is fed by policies that allow, and in some cases require, suspects to be held for a wide variety crimes for long periods before trial.

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  • 14 killed in attack on Mexican border prison

    14 killed in attack on Mexican border prison

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    MEXICO CITY — Ten guards and four inmates were killed early Sunday when gunmen in armored vehicles attacked a state prison in Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso, Texas, according to state officials.

    The Chihuahua state prosecutor’s office said in a statement that around 7 a.m. various armored vehicles arrived at the prison and gunmen opened fire on guards. In addition to those killed, 13 people were wounded and at least 24 inmates escaped.

    Mexican soldiers and state police regained control of the prison later Sunday. The state prosecutor’s office said its personnel were investigating.

    In August, a riot inside the same state prison spread to the streets of Juarez in violence that left 11 people dead.

    In that case, two inmates were killed inside the prison and then alleged gang members started shooting up the town, including killing four employees of a radio station who were doing a promotion at a restaurant.

    Violence is frequent in Mexican prisons, including in some where authorities only maintain nominal control. Clashes regularly erupt among inmate of rival gangs, which in places like Juarez serve as proxies for drug cartels.

    Shortly before Sunday’s attack on the prison, municipal police were attacked and managed to capture four men after a pursuit, according to the state prosecutor’s office statement. Later, police killed two alleged gunmen traveling in a SUV.

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  • Misery in El Paso: Hundreds of homeless migrants live in squalor amid deportation fears | CNN

    Misery in El Paso: Hundreds of homeless migrants live in squalor amid deportation fears | CNN

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    El Paso, Texas
    CNN
     — 

    One-year-old Brenda’s tiny feet are bare on the cold asphalt of an El Paso parking lot as the harsh reality starts to sink in for her parents. They are undocumented. They are homeless. And their daughter barely escaped death when they crossed the Rio Grande.

    “My daughter would have died because she was super frozen,” said Glenda Matos.

    Matos’ pain is clear in her eyes as she recalls her daughter being drenched, in the freezing cold, all while crying hysterically. Matos and her husband, Anthony Blanco, say they had nothing to keep their daughter warm, not even body heat, because they, too, were wet and cold.

    Matos says she hugged Brenda tightly and ran from house to house begging for help until they finally found a kind El Paso resident who helped them with clothes and shelter.

    “I asked God for help,” Glenda said. “God… put those people in my way.”

    For Matos, the tiny red rosary with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, hanging from Brenda’s ancle, saved them. Matos says she wrapped the religious token on her daughter’s little body for protection when they left their native Venezuela.

    Brenda and her parents are some of the hundreds of migrants living in squalor in the streets of downtown El Paso around Sacred Heart Parish. The makeshift camp – with its piles of blankets, strollers and tents lining both sides of a busy street – has city officials expressing concerns about safety and public health given the area is packed with migrants who have no running water or proper shelter.

    The surge of migrants aggregating here started a few weeks ago, when anxiety about the scheduled end of the Trump-era pandemic public health rule known as Title 42 prompted thousands of migrants to turn themselves in to border authorities or to cross into the United States illegally in a very short period of time.

    Title 42 allows immigration authorities to swiftly return some migrants to Mexico. The policy was scheduled to lift last week, but a Supreme Court ruling kept the rule in place while legal challenges play out in court.

    While the impact of the ruling has sent ripples throughout the southern border, the scene in El Paso is one of a kind. It’s the only U.S. border town where hundreds of migrants are living in the streets longer than expected. It’s a new phenomenon that city officials say had never happened during prior migrant surges.

    It’s driven, in part, by the anxiety created by the uncertainty of Title 42, which motivated some migrants to cross the border illegally. These migrants don’t have family or sponsors in the US to receive them. And many also fear that traveling out of town without the proper paperwork could lead to apprehension by US immigration authorities.

    Evelyn Palma sits with her five children in the streets of El Paso, Texas.

    The misery around Sacred Heart Parish is palpable. Evelyn Palma has blankets hooked and draped on a chain-linked fence to keep the cold and the drizzle from hitting her five children, ages 1 to 8, some of them shirtless. She’s been living on the street for eight days. But Friday was especially miserable because it was 40 degrees and it poured overnight.

    “We woke up drenched,” Palma said.

    The 24-year-old mother from Honduras says she and her children turned themselves in to immigration authorities earlier this month, but they were swiftly returned to Mexico, likely under Title 42. That’s why, she says, that a week ago she decided to evade authorities by crossing the river.

    She is part of the growing number of migrants who El Paso city officials say have decided to enter the US illegally and, for various reasons, have not left the city.

    “They are people who came into the country in anticipation of Title 42 going away,” said Mario D’Agostino, El Paso’s deputy city manager.

    The living conditions Palma and other migrants are enduring has officials concerned about their safety and overall public health. City spokesperson Laura Cruz-Acosta says that the spread of disease is top of mind.

    “We are still in the middle of what is being called a ‘tripledemic,’ with continuing high infection levels of upper respiratory infections across the community,” Cruz-Acosta said.

    Evelyn Palma receives gifts for her children in the streets of El Paso, Texas.

    And while the city has space for about 1,500 migrants at shelters that have been erected at the convention center and at a public school, those beds are only offered to migrants who have turned themselves in to border authorities and have been allowed to stay in the US pending their immigration cases. Those migrants receive documentation from US Customs and Border Protection that allows them to travel within the country.

    Migrants who enter the country illegally are not offered city-provided shelter because federal dollars are being used to foot the bill. And those monies can’t be used to serve people who entered the country illegally, according to D’Agostino.

    City officials have been referring undocumented migrants to non-profit organizations and churches like Sacred Heart Parish, which turns into a shelter when night falls.

    That’s why hundreds of migrants aggregate on the streets around the church, hoping to score one of the 120 to 130 slots to enter the church for the night.

    Around 6 p.m., a line of migrants forms outside the church’s gymnasium. Parents can be seen clutching their children to try to keep them warm. Women and men with children are given priority, according to Rafael García, the priest that runs the shelter. García says it’s tough to send people away but that his church has limited resources to serve the growing need.

    Angello Sánchez and his 4-year-old son Anyeider were allowed into the shelter for the night several times this week. The Colombian father says he was trying to protect his son from the cold because his little face still had windburn from being out in the elements during the recent freeze.

    “I got here from southern Mexico on a train. It was so cold and he wasn’t wearing any jacket,” Angello said.

    Palma, the mother of five, says she was offered entry into the shelter with her children but decided not to take the offer because a pregnant friend who is accompanying her was denied access.

    El Paso, which means “The Pass” in Spanish, has historically been a gateway for migrants passing through into the United States.

    “For hundreds of years people have been passing through and it’s just part of their journey,” D’Agostino said. “In normal times the community doesn’t even realize it.”

    But this migrant surge is different because migrants are staying for days and even more than a week, city officials say.

    Besides lacking family or sponsors in the US to receive them, many migrants don’t have money to pay for their transportation out of the city. And in the makeshift migrant camp around Sacred Heart Parish, word is spreading about another factor that has some undocumented migrants hunkering down in El Paso: The fear of getting detained at immigration checkpoints located in the interior of the US.

    In the last week, at least 364 undocumented migrants who were traveling in commercial buses headed to northern cities were detained at these immigration checkpoints, according to tweets posted by El Paso’s border patrol chief.

    Palma says she heard about the checkpoints and the apprehensions and decided to stay in El Paso longer while she figures out what to do.

    “If immigration detains me, they’ll return me,” Palma said.

    Juan Pérez, from Venezuela, was down the street and said that “immigration is in the exits [of the city]… they’ll return us and send us to Mexico.”

    The US has 110 Border Patrol checkpoints in the southern and northern borders, where vehicles are screened for the “illegal flow of people and contraband,” according to a recent US Government Accountability Office report. The checkpoints are usually between 25 and 100 miles from the border, according to the same report.

    Anthony Blanco holds a hand-written sign asking for a job while his wife, Glenda Matos, plays with Brenda in the streets of El Paso, Texas.

    Anthony Blanco says he’s not afraid of being detained at these interior checkpoints.

    “I’ve walked through many different countries without documents. I don’t think we’re going to be detained, but if that happens, it was God’s will,” Blanco said.

    For days this week, Blanco has been holding a sign on the street corner that reads, “Help me with work so I can support my wife and baby,” and asking drivers who pass by for money for bus tickets to Denver.

    Why Denver? He says word has spread that there is work there and living is more affordable.

    Friday morning, a day which was especially miserable because it was cold after a hard overnight rain, Blanco was all smiles. He says he had collected enough money to continue his journey to Denver.

    “Thank God,” Blanco said.

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  • Tent processing center for migrants going up in El Paso, expected to increase capacity by 1,000 | CNN

    Tent processing center for migrants going up in El Paso, expected to increase capacity by 1,000 | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    In response to the increased number of migrants crossing the border in El Paso, US Customs and Border Protection is erecting a soft-sided tent facility to increase migrant processing capacity by about 1,000, according to Landon Hutchens, US Customs and Border Protection spokesperson.

    “The facility will be used by U.S. Border Patrol El Paso Sector to provide additional migrant processing capabilities, with a capacity to hold approximately 1,000 migrants while they are processed in accordance with U.S. immigration law,” Hutchens said in a statement.

    The facility is expected to be operational sometime in January.

    In preparation for the possible lifting of Title 42, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would be adding 10 soft-sided facilities to boost its processing capacity. The facility going up in El Paso is one of those facilities.

    “This is part of the agency’s response efforts regarding increased migrant encounters in the El Paso area, along with surging additional personnel and providing funding to local partners,” Hutchens added.

    “The addition of temporary processing facilities such as this one increases CBP’s capacity to safely take noncitizens into custody and place them into immigration proceedings.”

    Title 42 was put in place by the Center for Disease Control in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in a public health bid to curb the spread of Covid-19, but advocates argue it’s been used to halt immigration at the US-Mexico border.

    The controversial order was set to end December 21 but remains in limbo after the Supreme Court issued an order Wednesday allowing the policy to remain in effect while legal challenges play out – a process that could stretch out for at least several months.

    The city of El Paso is straining to handle the daily influx of migrants crossing the border.

    Two vacant schools in the city are being prepared to house migrants, Deputy City Manager Mario D’Agostino said Tuesday.

    Shelters have been set up at hotels, and some church parishes have volunteered to house migrants, he said. About 1,000 beds have been set up in El Paso’s convention center, which housed more than 480 migrants overnight on Christmas Eve and about 420 on Christmas Day, city spokesperson Laura Cruz-Acosta confirmed to CNN.

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  • The US asylum backlog is nearing 1.6 million, the highest number on record | CNN

    The US asylum backlog is nearing 1.6 million, the highest number on record | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Nearly 1.6 million asylum applications are pending in US immigration courts and at US Citizenship and Immigration Services – the largest number of pending asylum cases on record, according to analysis of federal data by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

    US immigration courts have seen an over seven-fold increase in asylum cases from fiscal year 2012, when there were 100,000 cases pending, and the end of fiscal year 2022, when the backlog grew to over 750,000, per the clearinghouse.

    “Since then, in just the first two months of [fiscal year] 2023 (October – November 2022), the asylum backlog jumped by over 30,000 new cases and now totals, 787,882,” the clearinghouse stated.

    The asylum seekers are from 219 different countries and speak 418 different languages, according to the Syracuse group. About 3 out of 10 are children under the age of 18 and the leading countries of origin include Guatemala, Venezuelan, Cuba and Brazil, the group said. Florida and Massachusetts are among the states with the biggest asylum case growth.

    The overall average wait time for an asylum hearing is about 4.3 years, but in Omaha, Nebraska – the court with the longest delay – the wait time averages 5.9 years, according to the group.

    A growing number of asylum seekers are being electronically monitored through the Department of Homeland Security’s Alternative to Detention program, while a small portion – about 2,000 – are in ICE detention, according to the clearinghouse.

    The analysis comes amid a recent surge in migrants – many from Venezuela and Haiti – at the southern US border.

    Despite the continued cold temperatures, border agents in the El Paso area continue to encounter between 1,500 and 1,600 migrants every day, a federal law enforcement source with knowledge of operations on the ground told CNN.

    It’s a drop compared to the numbers seen a few weeks ago, when 2,500 migrants were being encountered each day. Last week, the daily encounters dropped to about 1,500 per day, according to a statement issued by the Department of Homeland Security.

    The city declared a state of emergency earlier this month over thousands of migrants living in unsafe conditions.

    Many undocumented migrants – those who don’t have the proper documentation showing they’ve been processed by US border patrol – have been on the streets seeking shelter during the winter storm. The same law enforcement source also warned that human smuggling has also continued in the area.

    Peter Jaquez, the Border Patrol Chief in El Paso, tweeted last week that in 48 hours, agents foiled 12 smuggling schemes and apprehended 15 human smugglers and 57 migrants.

    Efforts to transport migrants to other sectors for processing are ongoing in the El Paso area, according to the law enforcement source. Last week, about 6,000 migrants were moved out of the El Paso area for processing and another 3,400 migrants were expelled in removal flights, CNN previously reported.

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  • Winter weather live updates | Travel chaos, bitter cold

    Winter weather live updates | Travel chaos, bitter cold

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    TORONTO — Meteorologists in Canada are warning of a potential once-in-a-decade weather event as a winter storm causes widespread school closures, power outages and flight cancellations.

    Environment Canada is predicting strong winds, heavy snowfall and possible flash freezing and has issued winter storm warnings for the vast majority of Ontario and Quebec.

    “We may only see one of these storms every five or 10 years,” says Environment Canada meteorologist Mitch Meredith. “I’ve only seen a couple of storms like this in the last 20 years.”

    Environment Canada said flash, or sudden, freezes are likely as rain turned to heavy snow on Friday in parts of southern Ontario, creating dangerous driving conditions.

    The storm upended holiday travel plans for thousands of people as airlines preemptively canceled flights, with more disruptions expected.

    ———

    KEY DEVELOPMENTS

    — Ontario, Quebec pummeled by winter storm

    — Ho, ho, snow: NORAD’s Santa tracker ready to roll despite winter storm

    — Falling iguana alert! Even sunny Florida could see freezing temps this weekend

    — Huge storm intensifies into a “ bomb cyclone ”

    — As temperatures plummet, migrants wait along the U.S.-Mexico border for a possible change to asylum rules

    — Air Force tops Baylor in frigid Armed Forces Bowl

    ———

    OTHER DEVELOPMENTS

    ———

    JACKSON, Miss. — In Jackson, Mississippi, the city’s beleaguered water system has so far been able to withstand blistering temperature drops, city officials said Friday. The mayor had expressed concerns that the system — which has led to numerous water shortages in recent years — remained vulnerable to subfreezing temperatures.

    The city’s main water plants “held up to the temperature drops overnight,” city spokeswoman Melissa Faith Payne told WLBT-TV. There have been some water main breaks and some residents have experienced lower water pressure, but crews were making repairs, she said.

    ———

    NEW YORK — Calling it a “kitchen sink storm,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency Friday as wintry weather heads into the state.

    “It is throwing everything at us but the kitchen sink. We’ve had ice, flooding, snow, freezing temperatures, and everything that Mother Nature could wallop at us this weekend,” Hochul said during a press briefing.

    In some parts of the state, precipitation is coming down in rain, which is then turning into ice as temperatures quickly dip. Other parts of the state are at risk of flooding, Hochul said.

    “The rain comes down and there’s barely enough time between the rain and the icing for our snowplows and crews to be able to salt the roads,” the governor said.

    “This is a life threatening event,” Hochul said.

    ———

    COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado — Rest assured, kids. A bomb cyclone is no match for the big man in red.

    The North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, is the U.S. military agency responsible for monitoring and defending the skies above North America.

    The agency also runs the NORAD Tracks Santa service, which allows people to follow his Christmas journey through its noradsanta.org website, social media channels and mobile app.

    The agency this year plans to have about 1,500 volunteers working on Christmas Eve to field phone calls from children who want to know Santa’s location and delivery schedule. The frightful weather isn’t expected to affect Santa’s schedule.

    “I think Santa will be right at home with the Arctic weather that’s hitting into the lower 48,” says Lt. General David Nahom, a NORAD official based in Anchorage, Alaska.

    ———

    COLLEGE PARK, Md. — This week’s massive storm with its blizzard conditions and Arctic air may set some temperature and wind gust records, but it isn’t unprecedented.

    That’s according to Greg Carbin, chief of forecast operations for the Weather Prediction Center at the National Weather Service. But the storm hitting just before the Christmas holiday when so many Americans are traveling, however, will make it especially disruptive.

    “The impacts are perhaps far greater than they might be in the middle of winter during a typical weekend without a holiday,” said Carbin. “It is a notable storm.”

    The initial shock of cold temperatures is like the fatal February 2021 winter storm where frigid air descended into Texas. But the cold during that storm lingered, knocking out power for millions in Texas. Many died from hypothermia. This storm isn’t expected to last as long.

    “Give it a day or two” and temperatures will start to rebound, Carbin said.

    ———

    WATERLOO, Iowa — Even though the sporting events were canceled, eastern Iowa sports broadcaster Mark Woodley didn’t get the day off.

    “I normally do sports,” Woodley says on-air for Waterloo TV station KWWL. “Everything is canceled here for the next couple of days so what better time to ask the sports guy to come in about five hours earlier than he would normally wake up and go stand out in the wind and the snow and the cold and tell other people not to do the same?”

    By midday Friday, a compilation of his TV stand-ups had been viewed nearly 5 million times on Twitter.

    He later says to a news anchor: “I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. The good news is that I can still feel my face right now. The bad news is, I kind of wish I couldn’t.”

    It may be awhile before Woodley returns to sports. Waterloo, which is about 90 miles (145 kilometers) northeast of Des Moines, remains under a blizzard warning until 6 a.m. Saturday.

    ———

    Power outages are piling up across the United States from a winter storm that is bringing heavy snow and powerful winds to much of the country.

    More than 1.4 million homes and businesses were without electricity Friday morning. That’s according to the website PowerOutage.us, which tracks utility reports.

    Most of the outages are in the Eastern U.S., where gusty winds have knocked down trees and power lines.

    In Vermont, residents were told to plan for a “multi-day event” for full power restoration and cleanup.

    “I’m hearing from crews who are seeing grown trees ripped out by the roots,” Mari McClure, president of Green Mountain Power, the state’s largest utility, said at a news conference.

    In Maine, gusts approaching 70 mph (113 kph) were reported along the coast Friday morning. Atop New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, the tallest peak in the Northeast, the wind topped 130 mph (210 kph).

    Hundreds of utility and tree crews were deployed in New England, but the high winds hampered them. The limit for using bucket trucks is typically 25 mph (40 kph) to 35 mph (56 kph), a utility official said.

    ———

    SEATTLE – All bus service was suspended in the greater Seattle area Friday morning due to an ice storm that made travel treacherous and Sea-Tac International Airport closed two out of three runways.

    King County Metro said buses were unable to leave bases due to “deteriorating and unsafe road conditions.” The agency said it hoped it would be able to run buses later Friday. In Pierce, Kitsap and Snohomish counties, authorities also halted bus service.

    The Pacific Northwest has shivered under extreme cold for several days. Forecasters said the freezing rain, which is affecting western Washington and Oregon, is happening as temperatures start to rise and a storm moves through. The warm up will be quick, with forecasters saying temperatures could reach the 50s in Seattle by Christmas.

    ———

    COLLEGE PARK, Md. — The huge winter storm pummeling parts of the United States and Canada has intensified into a bomb cyclone. That’s according to the National Weather Service, which says the atmospheric pressure of the storm has dropped rapidly enough over the past 24 hours to classify the system that way.

    John Moore, a spokesman and meteorologist with the National Weather Service, says the central pressure of the system has fallen rapidly and is expected to continue dropping over the next few hours.

    Blizzard warnings are in effect in the Great Lakes area, where snowfall is expected to combine with powerful winds to create whiteout conditions.

    ———

    COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Extreme cold, powerful wind and blowing snow are wreaking havoc on holiday travelers.

    The National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center calls it a “historic winter storm.” If you’re in the U.S., there’s a good chance winter weather of some sort is in your forecast. The weather service says its map “depicts one of the greatest extents of winter weather warnings and advisories ever.”

    By the numbers:

    — 181 million people are under wind chill warnings or advisories.

    — More than 11 million people are under blizzard warnings.

    — 58 million people face winter storm warnings.

    — And more than 500,000 people are under ice storm warnings.

    ———

    NEW YORK — What is a “bomb cyclone” anyway?

    The name comes from the meteorological term bombogenesis, which occurs when a fast-developing storm rapidly intensifies, causing atmospheric pressure to quickly drop in a 24-hour period. Bombogenesis creates a bomb cyclone.

    It all started farther north, as frigid air collected over the snow-covered ground in the Arctic, said Ryan Maue, a private meteorologist in the Atlanta area.

    Then the jet stream — wobbling air currents in the middle and upper parts of the atmosphere — began pushing this cold pool down into the U.S.

    As this arctic air is pushed into the warmer, moister air ahead of it, the system can quickly develop into serious weather, including a bomb cyclone.

    ———

    CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — A group of Venezuelan migrants sought refuge from the cold under blankets beside a bonfire in a dirt alleyway beside a crumbling cinderblock wall in this city across the border from El Paso.

    “We’re from the coast (of Venezuela) with lot of sun and the cold affects us,” said 22-year-old Rafael Gonzalez and a native of La Guaira on the Caribbean coast. “The shelter here is very full. … And that means it’s our turn to be here, having a little bonfire.”

    He and others said they are eager to learn whether the U.S. will lift restrictions on migrants seeking asylum at the border.

    Nearby, migrants from Venezuela and Central America sought refuge from the cold in a three-room shelter without beds, lying shoulder-to-shoulder among blankets on a concrete floor.

    The shelter has been forged gradually with repairs to an abandoned building in recent weeks. The project is the work of pastor Elias Rodriguez of the Casa Nueva Voz ministry, who grew concerned about the emergence of a small “tent city” along the Rio Grande without even a water faucet.

    “Outside there are people making fires, people waiting by the door because we only have 135 spaces,” Rodriguez said.

    “It’s been so cold that people, when I step outside, they say, ‘Please let me in even if there’s standing room only, I don’t even have to find a place on the floor to sleep as long as you just allow me to come in.’”

    ———

    FORT WORTH, Texas — “Cold might be putting it mildly,” Air Force coach Troy Calhoun said after the Falcons beat Baylor 30-15 on Thursday night.

    “I don’t think I’ve experienced anything like that,” he said. “When it’s not warm, it’s not easy. It never is at the United States Air Force Academy. But these guys, just the heart, the guts and the right, extraordinary young people. I’m glad they’re fighting for our country.”

    Baylor officials announced it was the coldest kickoff temperature in the history of the program based about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Dallas-Fort Worth in Waco.

    ———

    Follow AP coverage of weather at: https://apnews.com/hub/weather

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  • Winter weather live updates | Travel chaos, bitter cold

    Winter weather live updates | Travel chaos, bitter cold

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    COLLEGE PARK, Md. — The huge winter storm pummeling parts of the United States and Canada has intensified into a bomb cyclone. That’s according to the National Weather Service, which says the atmospheric pressure of the storm has dropped rapidly enough over the past 24 hours to classify the system that way.

    John Moore, a spokesman and meteorologist with the National Weather Service, says the central pressure of the system has fallen rapidly and is expected to continue dropping over the next few hours.

    Blizzard warnings are in effect in the Great Lakes area, where snowfall is expected to combine with powerful winds to create whiteout conditions.

    ———

    KEY DEVELOPMENTS

    — Huge storm could intensify into a “ bomb cyclone ”

    — As temperatures plummet, migrants wait along the U.S.-Mexico border for a possible change to asylum rules

    — Air Force tops Baylor in frigid Armed Forces Bowl

    ———

    OTHER DEVELOPMENTS

    COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Extreme cold, powerful wind and blowing snow are wreaking havoc on holiday travelers.

    The National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center calls it a “historic winter storm.” If you’re in the U.S., there’s a good chance winter weather of some sort is in your forecast. The weather service says its map “depicts one of the greatest extents of winter weather warnings and advisories ever.”

    By the numbers:

    — 181 million people are under wind chill warnings or advisories.

    — More than 11 million people are under blizzard warnings.

    — 58 million people face winter storm warnings.

    — And more than 500,000 people are under ice storm warnings.

    ———

    NEW YORK — What is a “bomb cyclone” anyway?

    The name comes from the meteorological term bombogenesis, which occurs when a fast-developing storm rapidly intensifies, causing atmospheric pressure to quickly drop in a 24-hour period. Bombogenesis creates a bomb cyclone.

    It all started farther north, as frigid air collected over the snow-covered ground in the Arctic, said Ryan Maue, a private meteorologist in the Atlanta area.

    Then the jet stream — wobbling air currents in the middle and upper parts of the atmosphere — began pushing this cold pool down into the U.S.

    As this arctic air is pushed into the warmer, moister air ahead of it, the system can quickly develop into serious weather, including a bomb cyclone.

    ———

    CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — A group of Venezuelan migrants sought refuge from the cold under blankets beside a bonfire in a dirt alleyway beside a crumbling cinderblock wall in this city across the border from El Paso.

    “We’re from the coast (of Venezuela) with lot of sun and the cold affects us,” said 22-year-old Rafael Gonzalez and a native of La Guaira on the Caribbean coast. “The shelter here is very full. … And that means it’s our turn to be here, having a little bonfire.”

    He and others said they are eager to learn whether the U.S. will lift restrictions on migrants seeking asylum at the border.

    Nearby, migrants from Venezuela and Central America sought refuge from the cold in a three-room shelter without beds, lying shoulder-to-shoulder among blankets on a concrete floor.

    The shelter has been forged gradually with repairs to an abandoned building in recent weeks. The project is the work of pastor Elias Rodriguez of the Casa Nueva Voz ministry, who grew concerned about the emergence of a small “tent city” along the Rio Grande without even a water faucet.

    “Outside there are people making fires, people waiting by the door because we only have 135 spaces,” Rodriguez said.

    “It’s been so cold that people, when I step outside, they say, ‘Please let me in even if there’s standing room only, I don’t even have to find a place on the floor to sleep as long as you just allow me to come in.’”

    ———

    FORT WORTH, Texas — “Cold might be putting it mildly,” Air Force coach Troy Calhoun said after the Falcons beat Baylor 30-15 on Thursday night.

    “I don’t think I’ve experienced anything like that,” he said. “When it’s not warm, it’s not easy. It never is at the United States Air Force Academy. But these guys, just the heart, the guts and the right, extraordinary young people. I’m glad they’re fighting for our country.”

    Baylor officials announced it was the coldest kickoff temperature in the history of the program based about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Dallas-Fort Worth in Waco.

    ———

    Follow AP coverage of weather at: https://apnews.com/hub/weather

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  • Dangerous winter storm could disrupt holiday travel for millions of Americans:

    Dangerous winter storm could disrupt holiday travel for millions of Americans:

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    Travelers across much of the eastern United States were bracing Thursday for one of the most treacherous Christmas weekends in decades, with forecasters warning of a “bomb cyclone” that will pack heavy snow and wind while sending temperatures plummeting 50 degrees Fahrenheit in a matter of hours.

    The frigid air was moving through the central United States to the east, with wind chill advisories affecting about 135 million people over the coming days, weather service meteorologist Ashton Robinson Cook said Thursday. Places like Des Moines, Iowa, will feel like minus 37 degrees, making it possible to suffer frostbite in less than five minutes.

    There were already widespread disruptions in flights and train travel. As of Thursday afternoon, 2,225 flights had been cancelled in the U.S., and about 6,800 were delayed. The numbers were predicted to continue to climb as freezing weather hits the Midwest. Airports in Chicago and Denver were reporting the most cancelations.  

    “Today’s a very challenging day for Delta teams, exacerbated by a freeing rain event in the Pacific Northwest,” Delta spokesman Morgan Durrant told CBS News Thursday. “Tomorrow, the challenges will be at our Detroit hub with a change in the forecast overnight of rain to snow.”    

    Unexpected light snow in the Dallas area forced de-icing operations at Dallas Fort Worth International and Dallas Love Field airports, resulting in additional delays.  

    Winter storm, Minneapolis, December 2022
    High winds whip around 7.5 inches of new snow at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport as workers prepare a Sun Country Airlines plane for takeoff on Dec. 22, 2022. 

    David Joles/Star Tribune via Getty Images


    “This is not like a snow day when you were a kid,” President Biden warned Thursday in the Oval Office after a briefing from federal officials. “This is serious stuff.”    

    New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a statewide state of emergency Thursday evening, saying in a statement that “heavy rain and snow, strong winds, coastal and lakeshore flooding, flash freezing, extremely low wind chills and power outages” were “all possible.”

    Forecasters are expecting a bomb cyclone — when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm — to develop near the Great Lakes, which will increase winds and create blizzard conditions, Cook said.

    Winter storm, Minneapolis, December 2022
     A man shovels the sidewalk while another one clears the snow with a power sweeper Dec. 22, 2022 in downtown Minneapolis. 

    Alex Kormann/Star Tribune via Getty Images


    In South Dakota, Rosebud Sioux Tribe emergency manager Robert Oliver said tribal authorities have been working to clear roads to deliver propane and fire wood to homes, but face a relentless wind that has created drifts over 10 feet in some places.

    “This weather and the amount of equipment we have — we don’t have enough,” Oliver said, noting that rescues of people stranded in their homes had to be halted early Thursday when the hydraulic fluid in heavy equipment froze amid a 41 below zero windchill.

    He said five have died in recent storms, including a blizzard from last week.

    “It’s just kind of scary for us here, we just kind of feel isolated and left out,” said Shawn Bordeaux, a Democratic state lawmaker, who said he was running out of propane heat at his home near Mission on the tribe’s reservation.

    In Texas, temperatures were expected to quickly plummet Thursday, but state leaders promised there wouldn’t be a repeat of the February 2021 storm that overwhelmed the state’s power grid and was blamed for hundreds of deaths.

    The cold weather extended to El Paso and across the border into Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where migrants have been camping outside or filling shelters as they await a decision on whether the U.S. will lift restrictions that have prevented many from seeking asylum.

    Texas Power Grid To Be Tested With Incoming Winter Chills
    Transmission towers at a power plant near the Energy Research Park facility on Dec. 22, 2022 in Houston, Texas.

    BRANDON BELL / Getty Images


    Elsewhere in the U.S., authorities worried about the potential for power failures and warned people to take precautions to protect older and homeless people and livestock — and, if possible, to postpone travel. Some utilities were urging customers to turn down theirs thermostats to conserve energy.

    “This event could be life-threatening if you are stranded,” according to an online post by the National Weather Service in Minnesota, where transportation and patrol officials reported dozens of crashes and vehicles off the road.

    Michigan State Police prepared to deploy additional troopers to help motorists. And along Interstate 90 in northern Indiana, crews were braced to clear as much as a foot of snow as meteorologists warned of blizzard conditions there starting Thursday evening.

    Among those with canceled flights was Ashley Sherrod, who planned to fly from Nashville to Flint, Michigan, on Thursday afternoon. Sherrod is now debating whether to drive or risk booking a Saturday flight she worries will be canceled.

    “My family is calling, they want me home for Christmas, but they want me to be safe too,” said Sherrod, whose bag — including the Grinch pajamas she was planning to wear to a family party — is packed and ready by the door. “Christmas is starting to, for lack of a better word, suck.”


    Arctic blast bears down on holiday travelers

    03:17

    Amtrak, meanwhile, canceled service on more than 20 routes, primarily in the Midwest.

    Some shelters in the Detroit area already were at capacity but still making room.

    And in Portland, Oregon, officials opened four emergency shelters. In the city’s downtown, Steven Venus tried to get on a light-rail train to get out of the cold after huddling on the sidewalk overnight in temperatures that dipped to zero degrees with wind gusts of 40 mph.

    “My toes were freezing off,” he said, a sleeping bag wrapped around his head, as he paused near a flimsy tent where another homeless person was taking shelter.

    Courtney Dodds, a spokeswoman for the Union Gospel Mission, said teams from her organization had been going out to try to convince people to seek shelter.

    “It can be really easy for people to doze off and fall asleep and wind up losing their lives because of the cold weather.”

    In Montana, temperatures fell as low as 50 below zero at Elk Park, a mountain pass on the Continental Divide. Schools and several ski areas announced closures, and several thousand people lost power.

    Near Big Sandy, Montana, rancher Rich Roth said he wasn’t too concerned about his 3,500 pregnant cows weathering the cold snap, saying “they’re pretty dang resilient animals” and are acclimated to the weather.

    In famously snowy Buffalo, New York, forecasters predicted a “once-in-a-generation storm” because of heavy lake-effect snow, wind gusts as high as 65 mph (105 kph), whiteouts and the potential for extensive power outages. Mayor Byron Brown urged people to stay home, and the NHL postponed the Buffalo Sabres’ home game against the Tampa Bay Lightning.

    Denver, also no stranger to winter storms, was the coldest it has been in 32 years on Thursday, when the temperature dropped to minus 24 in the morning at the airport.

    In Charleston, South Carolina, a coastal flood warning was in effect Thursday. The area, a popular tourist destination for its mild winters, braced for strong winds and freezing temperatures.

    The wintry weather extended into Canada, causing delays and cancellations earlier in the week at Vancouver International Airport. A major winter storm was expected Friday into Saturday in Toronto, where wind gusts as high as 60 mph were predicted to cause blowing snow and limited visibility, Environment Canada said.

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  • High court temporarily blocks lifting of asylum restrictions

    High court temporarily blocks lifting of asylum restrictions

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is temporarily blocking an order that would lift pandemic-era restrictions on asylum seekers but the brief order leaves open the prospect that the restrictions in place since the coronavirus pandemic began and have been used to turn back hundreds of thousands of prospective asylum seekers could still expire on Wednesday.

    The court’s decision comes as officials and aid groups along the border are trying to prepare for whatever changes may or may not come Wednesday.

    In the city of El Paso, Mayor Oscar Leeser said they’ve received information from Border Patrol and shelters just across the border in Mexico indicating that up to 20,000 migrants might be waiting to cross into El Paso. The Red Cross has brought 10,000 cots to help with the increase, he said.

    The order Monday by Chief Justice John Roberts — who handles emergency matters that come from federal courts in the nation’s capital — comes as conservative states are pushing to keep the limits on asylum seekers that were put in place to stem the spread of COVID-19. The states appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in a last-ditch effort before the restrictions are set to expire Wednesday, saying that lifting the limits on asylum seekers would cause irreparable harm to their states.

    In the one-page order, Roberts granted a stay pending further order and asked the government to respond by 5 p.m. Tuesday. That is just hours before the restrictions are slated to expire on Wednesday.

    The order by Roberts means the high-profile case that has drawn intense scrutiny at a time that the Republicans are set to take control of the House and make immigration a key issue will go down to the wire.

    The immigration restrictions, often referred to as Title 42, were put in place under then-President Donald Trump in March 2020 and have prevented hundreds of thousands of migrants from seeking asylum in the U.S. in recent years. But as they’re set to expire, thousands more migrants are packed in shelters on Mexico’s border with the U.S.

    Conservative-leaning states have argued that lifting Title 42 will lead to a surge of migrants into their states and take a toll on government services like health care or law enforcement. They also charge that the federal government has no plan to deal with an increase in migrants.

    “This Court’s review is warranted given the enormous national importance of this case. It is not reasonably contestable that the failure to grant a stay will cause an unprecedented calamity at the southern border,” the states wrote in their request Monday.

    Immigration advocates have said that the use of Title 42 goes against American and international obligations to people fleeing to the U.S. to escape persecution. And they’ve argued that things like vaccines and treatments for the coronavirus have made the policy outdated. They sued to end the use of Title 42; a federal judge in November sided with them and set the December 21 deadline.

    Immigration advocates weighed in on Roberts’ order. In a statement, Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the President and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, called the decision “deeply regrettable.”

    “The Biden administration must make a full-throated defense of our humanitarian obligations in the face of politically motivated litigation. Title 42 has never been grounded in any public health rationale,” Vignarajah said in a statement late Monday. “Title 42 has only driven up repeat attempts to cross the border and lined the pockets of cartel smugglers who prey on vulnerable asylum seekers.”

    In a statement late Monday the Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for enforcing border security, said as Title 42 is still in effect people who try to enter the U.S. “unlawfully” will be expelled to Mexico.

    “While this stage of the litigation proceeds, we will continue our preparations to manage the border in a safe, orderly, and humane way when the Title 42 public health order lifts,” the statement read.

    In the leadup to the end of Title 42, administration officials said they have surged more resources to the southern border, including more border patrol processing coordinators, more surveillance and increased security at ports of entry. About 23,000 agents are currently deployed to the southern border, according to the White House.

    Before the Supreme Court weighed in, White House officials stressed Monday that the administration was bound by a court order to lift the pandemic-era border policy, despite urging from Republicans and some Democrats in Congress to extend it.

    “The removal of Title 42 does not mean the border is open,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

    Jean-Pierre said the administration has “additional robust planning underway” and pushed Congress to approve $3.5 billion in more funding for DHS as lawmakers continue to haggle over details for a massive year-end spending bill.

    That money for DHS would expand transportation capabilities so migrants can either be moved to less crowded border facilities, or be quickly removed if they have no legal grounds to stay. It would also fund more holding facilities, help speed up the processing of asylum claims and hire 300 more additional border patrol agents.

    In the border communities, officials and aid groups have been preparing for the end of Title 42 as well and doing so at a time when temperatures are expected to drop as an Arctic blast sweeps south.

    The top elected official in Hidalgo County, Judge Richard Cortez, said in the Texas border community of McAllen Border Patrol agents have been meeting with city and county officials, including in Mexico, to prepare for an influx of migrants crossing the border once the Title 42 policy ends. He’s concerned about where migrants will be able to sleep or get a warm meal and making sure the bridge connecting the U.S. and Mexico remains open to commercial traffic.

    “If they get overwhelmed at the ports of entry, they’re just going to turn them loose … and so where are they going to sleep at night, where are they going to eat? It just puts us in an unknown situation. What do we prepare for?” he said. “We’re going to do the very best we can. To me, I don’t know why Congress has not sat down and tried to improve the situation.”

    __

    Associated Press reporters Seung Min Kim in Washington and Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City contributed to this report

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  • US asks court to end asylum limits, with a short delay

    US asks court to end asylum limits, with a short delay

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    EL PASO, Texas (AP) — Texas dispatched National Guard troops to the border, and San Diego businesses anticipated a wave of Christmas shoppers from Mexico, as tens of thousands of asylum-seekers at the border waited for a Supreme Court ruling that could allow them to enter the United States.

    The U.S. government asked the Supreme Court not to lift the limits before Christmas, in a filing a day after Chief Justice John Roberts issued a temporary order to keep the pandemic-era restrictions in place. Before Roberts issued that order, they had been slated to expire Wednesday.

    Under the restrictions, officials have expelled asylum-seekers inside the United States 2.5 million times, and turned away most people who requested asylum at the border, on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19 under a public health rule called Title 42. Both U.S. and international law guarantee the right to claim asylum.

    The federal government also asked the court to reject a last-minute effort by a group of conservative-leaning states to maintain the measure. It acknowledged that ending the restrictions will likely lead to “disruption and a temporary increase in unlawful border crossings,” but said the solution is not to extend the rule indefinitely.

    With the decision on what comes next going down to the wire, pressure is building in communities along both sides of the U.S-Mexico border.

    In El Paso, Democratic Mayor Oscar Leeser warned that shelters across the border in Ciudad Juárez were packed to capacity, with an estimated 20,000 migrants prepared to cross into the U.S.

    At one point late Tuesday, some migrants were allowed to enter in batches through a gate in the border wall between two bridges that connect downtown El Paso with Ciudad Juarez, which is not uncommon at this spot on the border. Word that the gate was opening sent hundreds of people scrambling along the concrete banks of the Rio Grande, leaving smoldering campfires behind.

    The city rushed to expand its ability to accommodate more migrants by converting large buildings into shelters, as the Red Cross brings in 10,000 cots. Local officials also hope to relieve pressure on shelters by chartering buses to other large cities in Texas or nearby states, bringing migrants a step closer to relatives and sponsors in coordination with nonprofit groups.

    “We will continue to be prepared for whatever is coming through,” Leeser said.

    Texas National Guard members, deployed by the state to El Paso this week, used razor wire on Tuesday to cordon off a gap in the border fence along a bank of the Rio Grande that became a popular crossing point for migrants who waded through shallow waters to approach immigration officials in recent days. They used a loudspeaker to announce in Spanish that it’s illegal to cross there.

    Texas said it was sending 400 National Guard personnel to the border city after local officials declared a state of emergency. Leeser said the declaration was aimed largely at protecting vulnerable migrants, while a statement from the Texas National Guard said the deployment included forces used to “repel and turn-back illegal immigrants.”

    In San Diego, a sense of normalcy returned to the nation’s busiest border crossing despite uncertainty leading up to Roberts’ decision. The San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce said it learned from U.S. Customs and Border Protection that the more modern, western half of the airport-sized pedestrian crossing would reopen to U.S.-bound travelers Wednesday at 6 a.m. The lanes, which lead to an upscale outlet mall, have been closed to almost all migrants since early 2020 to accommodate Title 42 processing.

    The reopening comes “just in time for last-minute shoppers, visiting family members and those working during the holidays,” the chamber wrote to members. It said it didn’t know when the area would reopen to travelers going to Mexico from the United States.

    Immigration advocates have said that the Title 42 restrictions, imposed under provisions of a 1944 health law, go against American and international obligations to people fleeing to the U.S. to escape persecution, and that the pretext is outdated as coronavirus treatments improve. They sued to end the use of Title 42; a federal judge sided with them in November and set the Dec. 21 deadline.

    Conservative-leaning states appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that an increased numbers of migrants would take a toll on public services such as law enforcement and health care and warned of an “unprecedented calamity” at the southern border. They said the federal government has no plan to deal with an increase in migrants.

    The federal government opposed the appeal, and told the court Tuesday that it has marshaled more resources to the southern border in preparation for the end of Title 42. That includes more Border Patrol processing coordinators, more surveillance and increased security at ports of entry, according to President Joe Biden’s administration.

    About 23,000 agents are currently deployed to the southern border, according to the White House.

    “The solution to that immigration problem cannot be to extend indefinitely a public-health measure that all now acknowledge has outlived its public-health justification,” the Biden administration wrote in its brief to the Supreme Court.

    Yet the government also asked the court to give it some time to prepare if it decides to allow the restrictions to be lifted. Should the Supreme Court act before Friday, the government wants the restrictions in place until the end of Dec. 27. If the court acts on Friday or later, the government wants the limits to remain until the second business day following such an order.

    At a church-affiliated shelter in El Paso a few blocks from the border, the Rev. Michael Gallagher said local faith leaders have been trying to pool resources and open up empty space. On Tuesday, a gym at Sacred Heart Church gave shelter to 200 migrants — mostly women and children.

    Title 42 allows the government to expel asylum-seekers of all nationalities, but it’s disproportionately affected people from countries whose citizens Mexico has agreed to take: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and, more recently Venezuela, in addition to Mexico.

    ___

    Santana reported from Washington, D.C. Juan Lozano in Houston and Alicia Fernández in Ciudad Juárez contributed to this report.

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