CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — El Paso bolstered border security on Tuesday with the arrival of 400 Texas National Guard troops as the future of Title 42 stays unclear and the city prepares for an excellent greater influx of migrants.
Flanked by sand-colored armored Humvees and armed with automatic weapons, the troops proved to be a formidable presence on the American side of the Mexican border.
Armed Guardsmen quickly went to work on the first day of deployment, bolstering border crossing deterrents along the Rio Grande with coils of barbed wire – much to the wrath of migrants across the river hoping to cross into the US.
“Put down those weapons,” shouted Reynaldo Jose Casu Calle, 34, from the Mexican side to the soldiers.
Standing amongst piles of garbage near the bridge connecting the two countries, he shouted over the water: “We’re all only human. Let’s cross the border.”
Casu Calle, a Venezuelan mechanic, told The Post that he had been stuck on the Mexican side of the border for 2 weeks and had been living on the streets of Ciudad Juárez.
“There are too many individuals in the shelter,” he said. Casu Calle left his wife and three children, aged 6, 7 and 9, in Venezuela, where he said: “There is no such thing as a future for any of us.
“No gas, no water, no freedom,” he said. He hopes to eventually go to Canada, but he doesn’t know the way he’ll get there.
“Only Jesus might help me now,” he said.
Despite barbed wire and armed guards, a Cuban migrant named Mercedes tried to cross the river into the US on Tuesday.
She approached a gaggle of soldiers, filmed them with her cell phone, and begged them to let her cross into the country where she said she had a son – but she was told to show back.
She waded back through the polluted ice-cold water as much as her thigh and was escorted back to the Mexican side by the man.
Juarez resident Raul Henriquez Garcia, 59, watched the moment while smoking a cigarette.
“Now it’s like war,” he said, adding that it was the first time he saw an American military mass at the border with armored Humvees and automatic weapons.
An El Paso official said in an official communiqué that the troops were from the Texas Military Department and the Department of Public Safety and were conducting “training exercises” and weren’t related to the city’s response to the migrants.
Tuesday’s scene was a stark departure from previous events at the El Paso border, where only MSNBC reported that the migrants had “just walked in” on Monday.
“Officials sped up processing, but we were even capable of see a number of migrants just crossing the border last night,” correspondent Julia Ainsley said, “and the migrants I spoke to this morning said they’d no interaction with US immigration authorities. They simply got here in.”
Fox News also reported on Tuesday that it had seen evidence the government had lost track of 150,000 migrants in 2021after migrants were released to the US without being properly processed.
If Title 42 – which allows border officials to robotically deny entry to migrants to contain the spread of COVID-19 – is lifted, some 20,000 migrants will have the opportunity to cross the border almost immediately, the mayor of El Paso said on Monday.