After the Supreme Court ordered the Biden administration to keep Title 42 migrant expulsions in place, there has been a marked reduction in migrant apprehensions.
Migrant arrests were roughly cut in half in January to between 4,000-5,000 per day, which is down from the 8,000-9,000 the month before, sources told The Wall Street Journal.
Around the time of the stopping of the potential removal of Title 42, President Joe Biden finally made a first trip to the southern border and announced in early January that Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelan migrants would be turned around and rejected entry.
"This is pretty significant and some of it has to be some of the changes the president made," Yuma, Arizona, Republican Mayor Doug Nicholls told the Journal.
Yuma's illegal crossings fell 65% this month, according to the report.
But Nicholls still fears the Biden administration — which was slow to even invoke Title 42 — is not ready to lift the policy put in place by former President Donald Trump.
"I am still not seeing hard preparation for Title 42 ending," he added to the Journal. "We have for the last two years put that off for the future."
The migrants from those four countries above — because Mexico nor their home countries would take them in — would be limited to 30,000 per month as long as an American financially sponsors them under Biden's new policy.
Migrant crossings from those nationalities fell 97% to an average of 115 this week compared to 3,700 for all of December.
Some of the decline is a normal new-year slowdown in crossings after Christmas, though, officials told the post.
"We're to a point where we can really slow down just a little bit, take a deep breath and take a look at what we think is forthcoming," El Paso, Texas' Opportunity Center for the Homeless Deputy Director John Martin told the Journal.
South Texas has seen a sharp decline in crossings, according to Sister Norma Pimentel.
"I am just hopeful that the immigrants are patient and that they don’t get desperate," she told the Journal. "I think it's definitely better for people to have an appointment, to enter legally and safely."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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