Space is limited because of pandemic-related health precautions, but the number of migrants who crossed illegally during the last fiscal year set a 61-year record. The highest month was April, with more than 234,000 encounters.
Republicans say the numbers have increased so sharply because Mr. Biden signaled during his presidential campaign that his administration would be more welcoming to migrants. Others say the public health rule is to blame; hundreds of thousands of people have tried to cross illegally multiple times, they say, because unlike in normal times, the expulsions do not come with significant legal consequences.
Expelling migrants under the public health rule is much faster — averaging about 15 minutes per person — than under normal circumstances, when questions and paperwork can take up to two hours, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Particularly vulnerable migrants are granted humanitarian exemptions.
As of last summer, more than 16,000 migrants apprehended at the border had been granted humanitarian exemptions to the public health rule, allowing them to stay, the department said at the time. Advocacy groups and international organizations have deemed these migrants vulnerable; they include transgender people and families with young children who live in dangerous places along the border. But the program ended last August when the Biden administration did not lift the public health rule, as human rights advocates expected.
From the beginning, the program was a source of confusion.
“There’s no clear set of criteria for which families are allowed in,” Jessica Bolter, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told NPR in May 2021. “So it can really seem to migrants kind of like a game of chance.”
The Department of Homeland Security has continued to allow humanitarian exemptions to Title 42, but there is no organized program with a clear set of criteria for who is eligible. Between May 10 and May 16, the government allowed 1,247 people into the country under humanitarian exemptions to the public health rule, according to federal data.
Some countries will not take back their citizens.
There have always been countries that refuse to take back their citizens. In 2006, China refused to take back about 39,000 citizens who would have otherwise been denied entry into the United States. The Department of Homeland Security released many of them to await immigration enforcement proceedings.
