Former ICE Director, CBP Acting Commisioner Warn Fentanyl Deaths, Child Trafficking Cases to Soar as Title 42 Expires

Migrants cross the Tijuana River bed towards the San Diego port of entry to the United States, on May 11, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Multiple former senior immigration officials and residents of El Paso, Texas, shared their concerns over the implications of Title 42 during a town hall meeting on May 11.

Members of the Texas Public Policy Foundation-led Border Security Coalition held the town hall just hours ahead of the Trump-era public health policy expiring.

Title 42, which allowed Border Patrol agents to turn illegal immigrants back to Mexico immediately over public health concerns amid the COVID-19 pandemic, expired on May 11 at 11:59 p.m.

Thursday’s meeting was attended by former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Tom Homan, who took aim at the Biden administration’s handling of the immigration crisis, which experts say will likely worsen in the coming days and months.

“This administration has created such a crisis that it’s not even about immigration anymore—it’s about border security. And here’s the issue, when you cause a crisis this big that it has taken 70 percent of agents off patrol to process [immigrants], that makes the border vulnerable,” Homan said.

“When Title 42 ends, that means more people coming across the border, which means more agents being pulled off the line,” Homan continued, adding that this will result in an increased amount of Fentanyl coming across the border, as well as a rise in child trafficking, and suspected terrorists entering the United States.

Overall, Homan said Title 42 would lead to more deaths among immigrants as well as Americans, the latter of which he said would be due to a rise in Fentanyl overdoses.

Former ICE Director Tom Homan said Arizona is the next "ground zero" for illegal immigration and fentanyl trafficking at a press conference in Phoenix, on Jan. 26, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

‘This Administration Thinks Their Policies Are Humane’

“So when you open the border up the way that this administration has, all that ugly stuff is going to increase ... what’s happening in this country right now is the biggest national security failure since 9/11,” Homan said.

Homan also noted that under former President Trump’s administration, illegal immigration dropped significantly.

“This administration thinks their policies are humane, but they’re killing Americans at record numbers, and they’re killing migrants at record numbers,” he said, referring to the Biden administration.

“Since Joe Biden’s been president, over 1,700 migrants have died on U.S. soil,” Homan said.

At least 853 migrants died attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border unlawfully in fiscal year 2022, according to internal Border Patrol data obtained by CBS News. In fiscal year 2021, that figure stood at 546 migrant deaths, according to the publication.

However, an April 2022 report (pdf) by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that Border Patrol has “not collected and recorded, or reported to Congress, complete data on migrant deaths, or disclosed associated data limitations.”

Elsewhere during the May 11 townhall, Mark Morgan, former chief operating officer and acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), told attendees that between 2011 to 2022, 261,000 illegal aliens committed 433,000 crimes in the state of Texas alone, including 800 homicides, 800 kidnappings, and 5,000 assaults.

“This isn’t about immigration,” Morgan, a former FBI agent, said. “This is about border security ... and I promise you, our borders are a national security threat and vulnerability.”

Acting Commissioner for Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan at a press conference in Washington on March 5, 2020. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

El Paso Residents Share Fears Over Future

Multiple members of the El Paso community also shared their concerns about what the future holds, as roughly 60,000 immigrants were waiting to cross into the U.S. from Mexico, according to officials.

One resident said the current crisis felt like a “mountain that we’re having to deal with in this nation, in this city.”

“We are to pray like we have never prayed before in our entire lives,” she said. “This is a situation that we have never dealt with.”

At the end of the meeting, residents vowed to “take back” El Paso, which entered a state of emergency just two weeks ago ahead of Title 42 coming to an end. Multiple other counties along the southern border, including Cameron and Hidalgo, issued disaster declarations on May 11.

Amid growing concerns ahead of Title 42 expiring, the Biden administration announced a string of initiatives aimed at preventing an influx of immigrants, including a “targeted enforcement operation” in El Paso, focusing on immigrants who crossed the southern border illegally and were not processed for entry into the United States.

The administration has also said that some members of immigrant families who cross the U.S.–Mexico border illegally and seek asylum will be fitted with a GPS ankle monitor so that ICE officials can continuously track them.

Early Friday morning, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas told “CBS Mornings” that the administration had the situation under control.

“We have had a plan for more than a year and a half, and we have been executing on that plan, and we continue to execute on that plan,” Mayorkas said while acknowledging that the transition will be “tough.”

“People are going to see our plan take hold,” he continued. “It will take time. It will succeed.”