El Paso tightened border security on Tuesday with the arrival of 500 Texas National Guard troops as Title 42’s future remains unclear and the city braces for an even greater influx of immigrants.
The troops, flanked by sand-colored armored Humvees and armed with automatic weapons, have demonstrated a formidable presence on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico.
Armed guards quickly set to work on their first day of deployment, reinforcing border crossing deterrents along the Rio Grande with coils of barbed wire, much to the anger of migrants across the river, hoping to cross to the United States.
“Put those weapons away,” Reynaldo José Casu Calle, 34, from Mexico’s side yelled at the soldiers.
Standing in the piles of rubbish near the bridge connecting the two countries, he shouted across the expanse of water: “We are all just human beings. We cross the border.”
Casu Calle, a Venezuelan mechanic, told The Post that he had been stranded on the Mexican side of the border for two weeks and lived on the streets of Ciudad Juárez.
“There are too many people 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 future for any of us.
“There is no gas, no water, no freedom,” he said. He hopes to finally go to Canada, but he doesn’t know how he will get there.
“Only Jesus can help me now,” he said.
Despite barbed wire and armed guards, a Cuban migrant named Mercedes attempted to cross the river into the United States on Tuesday.
She approached a group of soldiers, filmed them on his cell phone, and begged them to allow him to enter the country where he claimed to have a son, but she was ordered to turn back.
She waded through frozen, contaminated water up to her thighs and was escorted by a man to the Mexican side.
Raúl HenrÃquez GarcÃa, 59, a resident of Juárez, sat watching the moment while smoking a cigarette.
“It’s like a war right now,” he said, adding that it was the first time he had seen the U.S. military en masse at the border in armored Humvees and automatic weapons.
A spokesperson for the Texas Military Department’s public affairs office told The Post in a statement, “The mission in El Paso is made up of approximately 500 service members from the Texas National Guard. They were activated and deployed in response to high levels of border crossings in that area over the past week and the impending expiration of Title 42.
“Service members are erecting an accordion barrier as needed to support area security, prevent and deter illegal immigration and transnational criminal activity.”
Tuesday’s scene was a stark departure from previous events at the El Paso border, where only MSNBC reported migrants “just walked in” on Monday.
“Officials have expedited the processing, but as of last night, we could see that many migrants had just passed through,” correspondent Julia Ainsley said, “and the migrants I spoke to this morning said they had no interaction with U.S. immigration authorities. . They just walked in.”
Fox News also reported Tuesday that it had seen evidence that the government had lost track of 150,000 migrants in 2021 after releasing migrants into the United States without properly processing them.
If Title 42, which allows border officials to automatically deny entry to migrants to stop the spread of COVID-19, is ended, some 20,000 migrants will cross the border almost immediately, the mayor of El Paso said on Monday.
