May 12, 2023 Latest from the border after Title 42's expiration

New York City plans to use a Coney Island elementary school's detached gym building to temporarily house some of the asylum seekers expected to arrive in the city, an NY Department of Education official told CNN on Friday. 

The standalone gym at the Michael E. Berdy School for the Arts, or PS 188, will be used on a temporary basis, as the building is not connected to the school and is not currently being used, the DOE official said.

The gym has a capacity of housing 100 individuals but no one is currently at the location, New York City Councilmember Justin Brannan told CNN. It’s unclear whether the facility will be used to house migrant single men or children and families, Brannan added. 

In a statement Friday, Brooklyn Community Board 13 said the borough “was given no advance notice” that the school was going to be used to house asylum seekers.

“The CB 13 office staff has been struggling all day to get the most basic information from various agencies regarding how many people will be housed there, for what length of time, whether the individuals have been screened for communicable diseases, what measures are in place to provide services, etc.”
 “This is not acceptable,” the statement continues. “The community must be informed about this process and CB 1`3 should be part of those discussions.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said the city is working on opening respite centers and emergency shelters every day but noted it is running out of space.

"We will continue to communicate with local elected officials as we open more emergency sites," Adams said in a statement, according to his spokesperson Fabien Levy.

CNN’s Nicki Brown contributed reporting.

Another federal judge is being asked to stop Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from using a new policy that releases migrants without a court notice or formal charges if Border Patrol facilities get too crowded.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argued in a motion Friday that the policy, known as Parole with Conditions, “was adopted without the required procedures" and "without considering all the relevant facts, and contradicts the governing law.”

A federal judge in Florida already put the policy on hold Thursday, issuing a temporary restraining order until a hearing can take place. Friday’s motion was added to an ongoing lawsuit on border policy filed in Texas by Republican attorneys general in 21 states, including Florida.

In response to the Florida order, US Assistant Secretary for Border and Immigration Policy Blas Nuñez-Neto said Friday morning that the ruling “will result in unsafe overcrowding at CBP facilities and undercut our ability to efficiently process and remove migrants, which will risk creating dangerous conditions for Border Patrol agents as well as non-citizens in our custody.”

The Department of Homeland Security argued that the law allows CBP to parole immigrants “for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”

“The fact remains that when overcrowding has occurred in Border Patrol facilities, Republican and Democratic Administrations alike have used this parole authority to protect the safety and security of migrants and the workforce," the department said in a written statement Friday.

The Parole with Conditions policy, issued in a memorandum Wednesday, allows Border Patrol to release migrants without formal charges under certain conditions following a health and criminal background assessment. The migrant is then required to schedule a formal immigration hearing within 60 days.

Mary Kay Mallonee contributed to this report.

President Joe Biden is coming under sustained pressure from both sides of the aisle over the administration’s handling of the expiration of Title 42, the controversial Trump-era pandemic public health restriction that became a key tool to turn back migrants at the US-Mexico border.

Biden faces the difficult task of showing he can control the border and handle an anticipated influx of migrants humanely, while navigating continued criticism from both Republicans and Democrats:

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent, railed on the Biden administration over its handling of the policy’s expiration, calling for passage of her bill to give the administration new expulsion authority at the border.

Sen. Joe Manchin, a moderate West Virginia Democrat, expressed frustration about the administration being unable to come up with a “viable solution to prevent an unmanageable surge of migrants at our southern border.”

Nevada Democratic Sens. Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto, as well as Nevada Democratic Rep. Susie Lee, sent a letter to the president on Wednesday expressing “strong concerns that the federal government is still insufficiently prepared for the reality that Title 42 is coming to an end.”

Rep. Henry Cuellar, a moderate Texas Democrat, was also critical of Biden’s shift in approach to the border issue, recently telling Politico, “Politically, now the president’s trying to move to the center when it comes to immigration policies – I think a little bit too late, but they’re moving to the center now.”

The end of Title 42 has also remained a target of intense criticism by conservatives.

In a news conference Monday morning, Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott likened the expiration of Title 42 as the laying out of a welcome mat to migrants across the world, signaling America’s borders are wide open.

Texas Republican Rep. Pete Sessions compared the current migrant situation to the US military’s chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

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The White House hit back at criticism from Congressional Republicans over the administration’s handling of the southern border Friday, dismissing comparisons to the deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan.

John Kirby, the National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, was asked about comments made earlier to CNN on Friday from Texas Rep. Pete Session. The Republican politician called the expiration of Title 42 “as chaotic as Afghanistan.” 

“It's just incorrigible to compare what we're trying to do, with safe and effective pathways coming in through the border, to what happened with Afghanistan,” Kirby told CNN's Jake Tapper on Friday. “It is not at all the same situation, and the footage that you just showed demonstrates that it's not chaos down there at the border, at least not right now.” 

Kirby said the administration was doing everything it could "strike the right balance" between providing legal pathways into the country alongside enforcing border laws.  

“If the Congressman really cared that much about helping with the southern border situation,” Kirby continued, “then he would enjoin his colleagues in the Congress to pass legislation, to pass immigration reform, to dust off and take a look at the immigration reform that the president put on Capitol Hill the day he took office, which has not yet been acted on.” 

When Tapper mentioned the border security bill passed on Thursday by House Republicans, Kirby responded: “Yeah, they waited until yesterday to put something forward, and it's obviously not going to go anywhere because it doesn't provide for the same sorts of safe legal pathways that the president is trying to provide for with the tools, the limited tools that he has available to him.”

Kirby described the recent death of a Honduran minor at a Florida shelter while in the care of Health and Human Services (HHS) as heartbreaking.

“We don't want them to be in that care for very long, and HHS is not designed to hold children for extended periods of time,” Kirby said. “We want to get them reunited with their families as fast as we can." 

The Texas border city of McAllen has seen fewer migrants than it was expecting on the first day following the expiration of Title 42, the mayor said Friday.

“It's not the numbers we initially expected, and we hope it keeps that way,” Mayor Javier Villalobos said.

McAllen is located across the border from Reynosa, Mexico. 

The city opened a processing and shelter facility at Anzalduas Park, and Villalobos said so far about 1,200 migrants are there, well below the number they can safely hold. He said the city will have the capacity to take in up to 5,000 migrants in the next few days.

Villalobos added that so far, all expenses they have incurred have been covered by federal grants and state assistance. 

Some Republican members of Congress have criticized the effort to simplify the processing of migrants at border crossings, saying it only encourages more illegal immigration. But Villalobos said it’s better for everyone for operations at the border to be as predictable as possible.

“If something's going to happen, we want it to be orderly and we want it to be legal,” Villalobos said.

The state of New York is asking the federal government for assistance with constructing and operating temporary shelters “in anticipation of several thousand asylum seekers arriving in New York City every week."

Gov. Kathy Hochul wrote in a letter to President Biden that the use of all available space “in and across the Northeast,” including military land, is necessary to “maintain critical and essential public services, specifically sheltering and housing.”

She also said New York City has exceeded its shelter system capacity and New York state “lacks the infrastructure, facilities, and resources necessary to meet the immediate demand to house and meet other basic needs of the large numbers of migrant arrivals.”

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment. 

“I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and the affected local government and that supplementary federal assistance is necessary,” Hochul wrote, asking that the request be granted “immediately.” 

The governor also said in a statement that she and a bipartisan delegation will continue urging Biden to allow asylum seekers the ability to work legally, “so they can join the workforce and become active participants in our communities." 

As of Tuesday night, more than 65,000 asylum seekers have been processed through New York City’s intake system and 39,400 asylum seekers are currently in the care of the city, according to Fabien Levy, spokesman for New York City Mayor Eric Adams. 

CNN’s Arlette Saenz contributed reporting to this post.

El Paso, Texas, has seen far fewer migrants coming into the city compared to last week following the expiration of Title 42, according to Mayor Oscar Leeser, and the area has not seen "any additional big numbers come in" since yesterday's spike.

“Title 42 has come and gone. I think it’s important to realize that the borders were closed yesterday, and they continue to be closed today. We saw a lot less migrants coming into our area and I think we saw that because a lot of the asylum seekers that were coming in were under the impression — and unfortunately they were told — that if they got here before Title 42 expired that they’d be able to stay in the United States and have political asylum,” Leeser said in a news conference on Friday. “The president of the United States and Secretary Mayorkas have said that that’s not the case.”

Leeser noted that the city has one of its two shelters in operation, and added that it was being used to shelter 150 people and limited to families only. He noted that single males and single females were staying at hotels. 

“We did see a spike in the last week or so and after yesterday’s spike at about 1,800 that came in yesterday, we’ve not seen any additional big numbers come in to the El Paso sector and to the El Paso area,” the mayor said. “We’ll continue to make sure everybody’s treated with respect.” 

Despite the decrease in asylum seekers this week, Leeser said the city is still preparing for the unknown due to the uncertainty of the immigration process. 

El Paso’s Office of Emergency Management coordinator Jorge Rodriguez said the city has not started chartering asylum seekers, while Mayor Leeser insisted the city remains committed to helping them reach their final destination.

On the heels of Title 42's expiration, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the US-Mexico border "should be shut down."

DeSantis, who is expected to launch a bid for the White House, spelled out how he would crack down on immigration if he were president, calling it a "day-one issue."

In addition to constructing a border wall, DeSantis said he would send migrants who cross the border illegally back to their home country. He added that those with valid asylum claims should "wait in Mexico." 

"We would not entertain any of these bogus asylum claims at the border," said DeSantis, speaking at a news conference in Fort Myers. Florida.

His remarks come just days after he signed a sweeping crackdown on unlawful immigration designed to deter undocumented individuals from showing up in his state. 

"You also have to apply for asylum in a safe country, your first safe country you get to. If you have somebody crossing five countries to get to our southern border, that is not valid asylum," DeSantis said.

The Biden administration is rolling out a policy that includes a new asylum rule that will largely prevent migrants from seeking asylum in the US if they passed through another country. 

DeSantis also attacked Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for his handling of the border.

"He’s got a disaster on his hands,” DeSantis said. “What kind of a country just allows people by the millions to just traverse through like that?"

Speaking more broadly, DeSantis said he believes immigration into the US is not a right afforded to any foreigner. 

“No foreigner has a right to come to this country. You as Americans have a right to enact laws that provide whatever type of process you deem appropriate for that, but you can't have people coming in superseding the rule of law,” DeSantis said.

“It’s important to just validate that idea that we actually do as Americans control our immigration system,” he added. 

A federal judge late Thursday night temporarily blocked one of the Biden’s administration’s key tools to try to manage the number of migrants in US Customs and Border Protection custody.

The ruling came just before Title 42 expired, and administration officials say it will make their job more difficult amid the expected influx of migrants at the US-Mexico border. An appeal is expected.

Here are key things to know:

Policy on releasing migrants: The plan, released Wednesday, allowed the release of migrants from CBP custody without court dates, or, in some cases, releasing them with conditions. As number of migrants increases at the border, the Department of Homeland Security said its plan would help release the immense strain on already overcrowded border facilities. As of Wednesday, there were more than 28,000 migrants in Border Patrol custody, stretching capacity.

The administration previously released migrants without court dates when facing a surge of migrants after they’re screened and vetted by authorities. The plan would have allowed DHS to release migrants on “parole” on a case-by-case basis and require them to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Florida sues: Florida sued to halt the policy, and District Judge T. Kent Wetherell, agreed to block the plan for two weeks. Wetherell, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, said the administration’s explanation for why its policy was only unveiled on Wednesday, when the end of Title 42 was anticipated for months, was lacking. He also said the Biden administration simply failed to prepare.

How has the administration reacted? Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, speaking on “CNN This Morning,” called the ruling “very harmful” and said the administration is considering its options.

Assistant secretary for border and immigration policy Blas Nuñez-Neto said the ruling “will result in unsafe overcrowding at CBP facilities and undercut our ability to efficiently process and remove migrants, which will risk creating dangerous conditions for Border Patrol agents as well as non-citizens in our custody.”

What’s next? Wetherell’s ruling will block the policy for two weeks. A preliminary injunction hearing has been scheduled for May 19.