Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said Sunday that the Border Patrol has seen a 50 percent drop in encounters at the southern border in the days following the expiration of Title 42, a pandemic-era policy that allowed the rapid expulsions of asylum-seekers.
“In fact, over the past two days, the United States Border Patrol has seen an approximately 50 percent drop in the number of people encountered at our southern border as compared to the numbers earlier this week before Title 42 came to an end midnight on Thursday,” Mayorkas told ABC’s Jonathan Karl on “This Week”
Title 42 ended last week, sparking concerns among lawmakers and officials that a surge of migrants would try to cross the U.S. border. Officials were expecting a heavy influx of migrants, but officials said they had yet to see a change in migrant levels in the immediate hours after the rule expired.
In preparation for the surge, the Biden administration allocated more resources to the border, including sending 24,000 border agents, along with military troops and asylum officers.
Mayorkas also denied on Sunday that the Biden administration’s immigration policy is equivalent to former President Trump’s. He said those immigrants who have not tried to seek relief in other countries would need a “higher threshold of proof” to qualify for asylum in the U.S., and reiterated that the Biden administration’s policy is “not an asylum ban.”