WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States will build additional barriers and roads in a Texas border area that has seen a large number of migrants crossing the border from Mexico, the government said on Thursday.
The Department of Homeland Security said it needed to waive a number of laws, regulations, and other legal requirements “to ensure the expeditious construction of barriers and roads in the vicinity of the international land border in Starr County, Texas,” according to a post in the Federal Register.
The number of migrants caught crossing illegally or presenting themselves at legal border crossings has steadily risen after dropping in mid-May when the U.S. rolled out stricter new asylum rules.
The U.S. Border Patrol has encountered more than 245,000 people entering the United States in the Rio Grande Valley Sector in the current fiscal year, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in the post.
The building projects will be funded by a fiscal year 2019 appropriation for border barrier construction, he said.
“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” Mayorkas said.
This a direct policy change from when Biden said in a proclamation to stop the building a wall on Jan. 20, 2021.“Building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution.”
The increase in illegal migration has strained U.S. cities at the border and farther north. The mayor of Eagle Pass, Texas, declared a state of emergency last month due to a “severe undocumented immigrant surge” into the city as several thousand migrants reportedly arrived in recent days.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday began a trip to Mexico, Colombia, and Ecuador in which he will deliver a message to would-be migrants that his city cannot accommodate them.
According to internal agency data, Border Patrol agents detained over 140,000 migrants who illegally crossed the border between the United States and Mexico during the first 20 days of September or an average of about 6,900 per day. Comparing that to the daily average of 4,300 in July, there has been an increase of 60%.
CBS News also reports that in May 2022 and December 2022, when Border Patrol reported over 220,000 apprehensions—the current all-time monthly highs—the agency is on course to record more than 210,000 migrant apprehensions. This month’s total would be the greatest level since those two months. The average number of migrants caught by Border Patrol each day during those record-breaking months was over 7,000, which September’s average is very close to matching.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
