Bloomberg Línea — President Joe Biden’s administration has approved the deployment of 1,500 active duty US troops to the border with Mexico in the face of a probable surge of migrants as immigration policy known as Title 42, implemented to deal with restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, comes to an end.
According to Fox News, the troops will be deployed from various US Army units and their duties will be limited to logistical actions in order to relieve various border agencies.
The sources told the media outlet that the soldiers deployed to the border will act in a similar manner to measures ordered in the administration of former President Donald Trump. Likewise, the soldiers will be armed as a “self-defense” measure, but they will not participate in the application of immigration laws.
Last week, the US departments of State and Homeland Security announced new measures to further reduce illegal migration throughout the Western Hemisphere, following the end of Title 42.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that beginning May 11, authorities will implement Title 8, the measure that has in the past regulated immigration to the US and carries additional consequences for illegal migration, including a re-entry ban of at least five years and possible criminal prosecution for repeated attempts to enter illegally.
Individuals who cross into the US through the southern border without authorization or without having used a legal path, and without having scheduled a time to arrive at a port of entry, would be presumed ineligible for asylum under a proposed new regulation, absent an enforceable exception, they explained.
Mexico’s president says he respects the decision
In its message last week, the US government said the Title 8 measures would be implemented in close coordination with the governments of Mexico, Canada, Spain, Colombia and Guatemala.
Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the US measure “is part of their powers, it is an independent, sovereign government, they make those decisions and we respect them”.
For her part, Mexico’s Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, said she will meet Tuesday with Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, President Biden’s advisor for National Security, at the National Palace in Mexico City.
The meeting, Rodríguez said, will be headed by López Obrador and that “both parties will talk about migration, arms and drug trafficking.