BROWNSVILLE, Texas – After touring “Camp Monument” where 10,000 migrants were processed after crossing the southern border the day before Title 42 expires, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) was “very emotional” having witnessed what he described as a “humanitarian crisis.”
“It’s very emotionally draining what we’re seeing here, but the nation needs to see this,” Marshall told reporters at a press conference at the border. “This is why President Biden needs to come and look one of these camps in the eyes and see for himself the tragedy that’s ongoing here.”
While reporters were prohibited from getting a close view of the makeshift processing facilities, hundreds of migrants could be seen in a small, open-air building at Camp Monument. Afterward, officials loaded them into white charter buses en route to detention facilities.
As one bus passed by Thursday evening, the tiny hands of children could be seen waving through the windows at a gaggle of reporters after Marshall spoke.
“[Border Patrol agents] are doing everything possible to treat folks humanely, but I’m telling you, we have to change policy,” Marshall said. “We can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing. Our systems are overwhelmed. It’s truly a humanitarian crisis.”
Marshall’s office arranged the trip, which three other Senators – all Republicans – attended Thursday, just hours before the pandemic-era immigration policy lifts and leaves the US without a legal vehicle to immediately deport thousands of migrants seeking asylum along the Southern border.
“I don’t know what this is going to look like tomorrow,” Marshall said. “Overall, they’ve told us that they had 10,000 encounters [at Camp Monument] yesterday, [and] 3,000 gotaways. That’s the size of my hometown.”
As the night inched closer to 11:59 p.m. ET — when Title 42 expires — 22,000 migrants were waiting to come through Camp Monument at the stroke of midnight.
They set campfires and sat in hammocks waiting counting down the minutes.
Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd said under Title 42, border agents sent 40% of migrants immediately back over the border. At midnight, none will be sent back.
Dozens of Customs and Border Control officers, Texas troopers and National Guard members were on hand to help process the thousands of migrants who filed in through the camp – a process that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who also attended the trip, said now takes only “about two minutes” thanks to the Biden administration.
“The Biden administration has sped up their processing … They are sending 40 or more buses a day full of illegal immigrants to detention facility,” Cruz said. “They pull out a phone, they scan their documents, they take whatever they say – name, age, what country you’re from – and boom, they put them on a bus and send them to the facilities.”
The problem, however, is many detention facilities along the Southern border just aren’t big enough. Brownsville’s, for example, “can hold roughly 4,600 people,” Cruz said.
“Yesterday, they had 7,000 [migrants.] So you know what they did? They had to release hundreds of people — just release them into the communities,” he said.
In Brownsville alone, more than 35,000 Venezuelans crossed illegally in less than a month, “not counting the whole rest of the border,” according to the Texas Republican.
While most migrants have come from South and Central America, the chaos at the southern border has inspired roughly 90-100 Chinese immigrants to illegally cross into Brownsville, Cruz said, raising concerns as tensions between Washington and Beijing simmer.
“Now for anyone that doesn’t have their globe nearby, China is not immediately to the south of the United States,” Cruz said. “But 90 to 100 a day are crossing illegally on this border being smuggled in by Mexican drug cartels. And I have to say I am angry.”
With border crossings at the temporary processing site totaling 10,000 in recent days even before Title 42 ends, Cruz said tomorrow – and beyond – could be even more overwhelming for border resources in the quiet southeast Texas town.
“There are – right now we’re standing – more than 22,000 people [at a] camp just south of the border getting ready to come across just in this location,” he said.
Cruz claimed the Biden administration wanted more people to arrive by not extending the pandemic-era immigration policy.
“Title 42 is expiring today,” he said. “And you know what happens tomorrow, those numbers go up. This is an invasion. And they want the numbers to go up.”
