Texas bracing for new migrant flood as Title 42 end nears

Migrant shelters across Texas are bursting at the seams and one city will declare a state of emergency as the state prepares to be flooded with people crossing from Mexico when Title 42 ends next month.

Asylum-seekers, mostly from Central and South America, are poised for the end of Title 42 — the federal pandemic-era policy which has allowed US officials to kick millions of migrants back to Mexico — to expire on May 11.

“We’re going to see something, based on all the information we’ve received, that we haven’t seen in El Paso,” Mayor Oscar Leeser said Monday.

The state of emergency will go into effect in the coming days as up to 40,000 migrants have gathered just across the border in Juarez, Mexico, sources have told the Post.

This is the second time an emergency has been declared in six months and El Paso’s own figures show they are encountering over 1,000 people a day at the border.

Leeser added the city’s convention center and two vacant schools will be used as temporary housing for the expected flood of migrants.

El Paso has been the top spot for migrants to cross into the US along the entire border for over a year.

It is followed closely by nearby Del Rio, according to the US Border Patrol, which says more than 3 million migrants have crossed into Texas since 2021.

By comparison, New York City declared a state of emergency in October after 40,000 migrants, mostly from Texas, were bused into the Big Apple, putting significant strain on its homeless shelters and services.

Meanwhile, in San Antonio, migrants are crowding into a shelter where food is running low as more and more people, often women and children, are increasingly turning to the shelter for help.

“I think it’s going to be a disaster,” Catholic Charities Executive Director Antonio Fernandez told a local station of the expected migrant wave.

As El Paso prepares for a new migrant surge — after previous waves have led to streets being flooded with people sleeping rough, overcrowded shelters and emergency services diverted from the city — it is asking for $25 million from the federal government.

On the other side of the border, tensions are already rising among those camped out in tent encampments just feet from the international boundary.

The Post witnessed as fists flew on Monday when one migrants set upon another during a church clothing giveaway in Juarez, Mexico.

The mostly South Americans living in the tents have taken to showering in old portable toilets and panhandling while they count down the days until they can cross into the Lone Star State.

They are soon to be joined, as US intelligence has been tracking large groups of migrants making their way north through Mexico, one official shared.

“We do know that there’s movement, through Mexico up to the border, and those numbers are going to be increasing as that date nears,” Jorge Rodriguez of El Paso’s office of emergency management revealed.

Despite the Biden administration claiming it was getting tough on asylum and saying migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua had to get a US sponsor and apply from a different country to enter, The Post found shelters were still full of people from those countries who had crossed over land borders, often illegally.

It has also emerged citizens of those same countries, apart from Cuba, can be admitted to the US at any time and given Temporary Protected Status, a designation that allows people to stay in America because it is unsafe in their home country because of war, natural disaster or other reasons.

Thirteen other countries also have this designation including Afghanistan, Sudan, Syria and over 400,000 people in the US currently have this status.

Last week Venezuelans Maria and Ali Angel Jose told The Post they had waited in Ciudad Juarez for three months trying to get an appointment through Biden’s CBP One app and apply the official way, but after being unable to secure anything, they turned themselves in at the border.

“It’s a thing of luck. You see single men get through or single women, then a family with kids will get expelled,” they said.