Democrat-Run Cities Declare Emergencies Amid Illegal Alien Surge as Title 42 End Looms

Would be asylum-seekers in a caravan heading to the U.S.-Mexico border, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on Dec. 11, 2022. Herika Martinez/AFP/Getty Images

A number of Democrat-run cities have declared states of emergency or appealed for federal resources to help cope with the influx of illegal aliens into their communities and as expectations build that the human flows will rise sharply when the Trump-era restrictions on asylum applications run out in just two days.

With the fast-approaching end of Title 42 authority that let U.S. officials quickly expel asylum-seekers who entered the country without authorization, the Biden administration has said it’s expecting a surge in illegal border-crossings.

After a federal judge set a Dec. 21 deadline for Title 42 to end, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it anticipates as many as 14,000 daily unauthorized border crossings.

Amid growing expectations for a rise in the number of illegal border crossings, several Democrat-run cities have declared emergencies or asked for federal help.

Migrants wait to cross the US-Mexico border from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2022. AP Photo/Christian Chavez

New York Braces for ‘Influx’

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, said Sunday that the looming expiration of Title 42 could force the city to slash public services to deal with a surge in illegal aliens.

“Our shelter system is full, and we are nearly out of money, staff, and space. Truth be told, if corrective measures are not taken soon, we may very well be forced to cut or curtail programs New Yorkers rely on, and the pathway to house thousands more is uncertain,” Adams said in a statement.

“We need a plan, we need assistance, and we need it now,” he added.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams joins a march across the Brooklyn Bridge to protest gun violence on June 11, 2022. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

New York City has, in the past several months, received tens of thousands of people who illegally crossed the border into the United States.

The governors of Arizona and Texas have repeatedly sent busloads of people to Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New York.

While the flow of illegal aliens to New York has slowed in recent months, Adams said that the expiration of Title 42 means that, “beginning today, we should expect an influx of buses coming from the border.”

Adams said that an additional 1,000 asylum-seekers are expected to arrive in New York City every week.

“We are in urgent need for help, and it’s time for our state and federal partners to act,” he said.

The New York mayor urged the White House and Congress to issue temporary work authorizations for asylum-seekers and “send aid to the cities that have borne the brunt of the crisis.”

Denver On ‘Verge of Reaching Breaking Point’

The city of Denver declared a state of emergency on Dec. 15 in order to stave off a local humanitarian crisis amid an influx of illegal aliens from the southern border.

Denver mayor Michael Hancock, a Democrat, announced the emergency as several hundred illegal aliens, mostly from Central and South America, arrived in the state over the course of just several days preceding his declaration.

“Let me be frank: This influx of migrants, the unanticipated nature of their arrival, and our current space and staffing challenges have put an immense strain on city resources to the level where they’re on the verge of reaching a breaking point at this time,” Hancock said at a news conference on Thursday.

“What I don’t want to see is a local humanitarian crisis of unsheltered migrants on our hands because of a lack of resources,” the mayor added.

According to Hancock’s office, more than 900 aliens have arrived in Denver over the past several months, including more than 600 since Dec. 2.

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock in Washington, DC, on May 15, 2017. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Hancock said in a post on Twitter that Denver is in urgent need of shelter workers to help cope with the influx of people from Central and South America, with the city offering $25 an hour and so desperate to fill the posts that the mayor said it’s even willing to consider candidates who don’t speak Spanish.

The expected surge in the number of illegal aliens has put extreme pressure on the city’s efforts to provide them with shelter, with Hancock’s office warning that the winter weather was set to make the situation worse.

Hancock said Denver was “on the verge of reaching breaking point” and that, with the looming lapse of Title 42, the city is “at a crisis point” and “cities all over this country are being forced to deal with something we’re not equipped to deal with.”

The state of emergency will allow Denver to access additional resources to help manage the influx.

El Paso Braces for ‘Incredible’ Jump in Illegal Aliens

The city of El Paso, a Democrat stronghold in Texas located on the U.S.-Mexico border, on Saturday declared a state of emergency amid the surge in unauthorized crossings that has left people sleeping in the streets.

El Paso mayor Oscar Leeser, a Democrat, said the emergency measures will allow the city to access more resources and authority to shelter people, with the declaration coming after Leeser said he saw scores of people sleeping in downtown streets after being released from custody.

“That’s not the way we want to treat people,” the mayor said during a Dec. 17 news conference.

“We wanted to make sure people are treated with dignity. We want to make sure everyone is safe.”

Leeser said the emergency measures would be even more necessary as Title 42 ends, with the mayor warning that the rise in the number of illegal aliens after Dec. 21 would be “incredible.”

Venezuelan migrants gesture as they reach the U.S. border fence to turn themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol after crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico in El Paso, Texas on September 22, 2022. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

El Paso recently recorded an influx of around 1,500 illegal aliens coming across the border in what was among the biggest single-day crossings ever in the region.

Over the past week, border agents have encountered an average of more than 1,600 illegal aliens a day in a 268-mile stretch of the border known as the El Paso Sector, according to figures published by the city.

Leeser said he expects the number of daily apprehensions and street releases to hit as much as 6,000 per day once the Trump-era restrictions run out.

A day before Leeser declared a state of emergency, Texas state Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Republican, visited the Border Patrol Central Processing Center in El Paso and recorded video that showed the facility severely overcrowded. He provided the footage to Fox News, which estimated that around 4,600 people were in custody at the facility, which has a normal operating capacity of around 1,040.

Gonzales also told CBS in an interview on Sunday that he witnessed about 500 people crammed into a pod designed to house 100 people at the facility.

“There’s one bathroom, the odor is terrible,“ he said. “Outside just above the hill, there’s a thousand, a little over 1,000 migrants waiting in outdoor conditions, not to mention the people that are waiting by the bridge and elsewhere.”

“It’s a very dire situation in El Paso,” he said, adding, “We’re not even at the worst of it yet.”

Illegal immigrants walk toward the U.S.-Mexico border in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on Dec. 14, 2022. Christian Chavez/AP Photo

Looming End of Title 42

The moves by Democrat-led cities come ahead of the upcoming termination of Title 42, a regulation designed to prevent the introduction of contagious diseases in the United States.

The rule was issued by the Trump administration in 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and was used over 2.5 million times to block asylum claims.

A federal judge in Washington ordered Title 42 to end on Dec. 21 and an appeals court rejected a bid by Republican-led states to keep it in place.

“Title 42 ends in two days. Get ready for more of this,” the House Judiciary GOP account on Twitter said in a post on Monday, sharing a video of a large group of people rushing across the river from Mexico to the United States.

Illegal aliens processed under Title 42 powers are not permitted to request asylum while in the United States and are removed from the country.

Last month alone, Border Patrol used Title 42 powers around 78,000 times to expel people from the country, according to former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott.

‘The Flow Is Going to Increase’

Scott said in an interview with NTD’s “The Nation Speaks” that the Title 42 expulsion process is “very quick” and saves around one hour of processing time per person.

“That means that’s 78,000 hours they won’t be out patrolling the border, which means, word of mouth, the cartel is going to say there’s more border open. The word also gets out that now you’re being caught and released” and that “you’re not even being kicked out of the country,” he said.

“So the flow is going to increase,” he warned.

“On Dec. 22, it’s almost like a starting gun’s going to go off,” Scott said, adding that intel sources in Mexico have warned that untold numbers of people are “literally backing up, they’re getting ready” to cross the border illegally after Title 42 ends in several days—unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes and gives the program an eleventh-hour extension.

A number of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have called for Title 42 to be extended but White House officials said their hands are tied because of the court order.

White House spokesman Abdullah Hasan said immigration laws will continue to be enforced at the border even after Title 42 ends and the Biden administration will work to expand legal pathways for migrants but discourage “disorderly and unsafe migration.”

“To be clear: the lifting of the Title 42 public health order does not mean the border is open,” he said. “Anyone who suggests otherwise is doing the work of smugglers spreading misinformation to make a quick buck off of vulnerable migrants.”

Hasan added that there’s a “robust effort underway to manage the border in a safe, orderly, and humane way when Title 42 lifts as required by court order.”

Remain In Mexico

Separately, a Texas federal court recently paused the ending of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), a Trump-era policy dubbed “Remain In Mexico” that involved people being returned to Mexico as their cases were processed.

Calling the policy cruel and ineffective, the Biden administration ended in early 2021 but a lawsuit later forced the administration into a U-turn.

The case went before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the Biden administration and told a lower court to review the case.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled on whether the Biden administration’s 2021 memo terminating the “Remain In Mexico” policy was lawful under the Administrative Procedures Act.

Kacsmaryk ruled against the Biden administration and halted the unwinding of the program, with a DHS spokesperson telling Fox News that the agency disagrees with the decision and is “determining next steps.”