BROWNSVILLE, TX – After visiting “Camp Monument” where 10,000 migrants were processed after crossing the southern border the day before Title 42 expired, Senator Roger Marshall (R-Can.) was “very touched” to witness what he described as “humanitarian crisis”.
“What we’re seeing here may be very emotionally draining, but the nation must see it,” Marshall told reporters at a news conference at the border. “That is why President Biden needs to return and look one of these camps in the eye and see for himself the tragedy that is happening here.”
While reporters were forbidden to see the makeshift processing facilities up close, lots of of migrants may very well be seen inside a small open-air constructing at Camp Monument. Officials then loaded them onto white charter buses on their option to the detention centers.
As one of the buses passed by on Thursday night, you possibly can see the little hands of children waving through the windows to a gaggle of reporters after Marshall’s speech.
“[Border Patrol agents] they’re doing every thing possible to treat people humanely, but I’m telling you, we’d like to alter the policy,” Marshall said. “We won’t keep doing what we have been doing. Our systems are overloaded. This is really a humanitarian crisis.”
Marshall’s office organized the tour, which was attended by three other senators – all Republicans – on Thursday, hours before pandemic-era immigration policies were lifted and left the United States and not using a legal vehicle for the immediate deportation of 1000’s of asylum-seeking migrants along the southern border.
“I do not know what it is going to appear like tomorrow,” said Marshall. “Overall, they told us that they had 10,000 meetings [at Camp Monument] Yesterday, [and] 3000 escapes. It’s the size of my hometown.”
As the night approached 11:59 PM ET – when Title 42 expires – 22,000 migrants waited to go through Camp Monument at the stroke of midnight. They lit fires and sat in hammocks, waiting, counting down the minutes.
Border Patrol Board Chairman Brandon Judd said that under Title 42 border agents immediately sent 40% of the migrants back across the border. None can be sent at midnight.
Dozens of customs and border officials, Texan troops and members of the National Guard were readily available to assist process the 1000’s of migrants who passed through the camp – a process that Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who also attended the tour, said now it only takes “about two minutes” due to the Biden administration.
“The Biden administration has accelerated their processing … They send 40 or more buses a day full of illegal immigrants to the jail,” Cruz said. “They take out their phone, scan documents, take every thing they are saying – name, age, country of origin – and boom, put them on a bus and send them to facilities.”
The issue, nonetheless, is that many detention centers along the southern border are simply not sufficiently big. Brownsville’s, for instance, “has a capability of about 4,600 people,” Cruz said.
“Yesterday that they had 7,000 [migrants.] So what they did? They’d to put off lots of of people – just release them into the community,” he said.
In Brownsville alone, greater than 35,000 Venezuelans crossed the border illegally in lower than a month, “not counting the rest of the border,” in line with Texas Republicans.
While most of the migrants come from South and Central America, the chaos on the southern border has inspired some 90-100 Chinese immigrants to enter Brownsville illegally, Cruz said, raising concerns as tensions boil over between Washington and Beijing.
“Now for anyone who doesn’t have their globe nearby, China shouldn’t be directly south of the United States,” Cruz said. “But 90 to 100 a day cross this border illegally, smuggled by Mexican drug cartels. And I actually have to say I’m offended.”
With the number of border crossings at the temporary processing site in recent days, even before the (*42*) of Title 42, totaling 10,000, Cruz said tomorrow – and beyond – may very well be much more overwhelming for border resources in the quiet Southeast Texas town.
“There are – at the moment we’re standing – over 22,000 people [at a] camp south of the border, preparing to satisfy right there,” he said.
Cruz claimed that the Biden administration wanted more people to return without extending the pandemic-era immigration policy.
“Title 42 expires today,” he said. “And what’s going to occur tomorrow, those numbers are going up. That is an invasion. They usually want the numbers to go up.”