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Riverside County facing greater impacts from border overflows with end of COVID order
Riverside County May 15, 2023
A Border Patrol vehicle. | Photo courtesy of Alex Smith/Wikimedia Commons (CC0)
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By Paul J. Young
The end of a federal immigration control regulation Thursday is expected to trigger a greater influx of border crossers into Riverside County and other locations, placing “significant stress” on county resources, requiring decisive measures to stop abuse of the immigration system, according to local and federal officials.
Title 42 of the U.S. Public Health Service Act was activated in March 2020 by then-head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Robert Redfeld, under the authority of former President Donald Trump, as a means of preventing propagation of COVID-19. The order, which ended Thursday, has enabled federal authorities to send border crossers back into Mexico without formal asylum hearings based on efforts to mitigate the spread of coronavirus.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the health order provided the means to expel 2.7 million individuals over the last three years.
“It remains to be seen what the local impact will be in the coming days, weeks or months when Title 42 expires,” county CEO Jeff Van Wagenen told City News Service. “It is likely that we will see an increase in the number of individuals released by CBP. This will cause significant stress to the system.”
According to Van Wagenen, the county began receiving large numbers of migrant transfers from Border Patrol agents who had nowhere to put them in March 2021. The period coincided with President Joe Biden’s rescission of Trump’s executive orders restricting immigration, including construction of a border wall.
Since that time, Border Patrol drop-offs near the agency’s offices in Blythe, Indio and Murrieta have been constant, Van Wagenen said.
“Riverside County is the only nonborder county in the country that is receiving drop-offs from CBP,” he said.
The numbers have fluctuated, but according to county officials, in March and April, the average number of undocumented migrants left in communities within the county averaged 122 per day.
“By (this) May, we were receiving closer to 200 (per day),” Van Wagenen said.
According to Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, the tide of border crossers may turn into a tsunami after Title 42 restrictions vanish.
“An estimated 150,000 migrants are waiting in northern Mexico for Title 42 to end so they can cross the border, with hundreds of thousands of additional migrants heading north from southern Mexico and Central America,” Calvert told CNS. “For years, Republicans in Congress have urged the Biden Administration to take action to prevent this crisis, but nothing has been done, and the human tragedy is only going to get worse due to President Biden’s inaction.”
The administration has denied the border could spin out of control. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last week that “the border is not open, it has not been open, and it will not be open subsequent to May 11.”
Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Indio, told CNS that “our immigration system is broken” but the administration has “taken positive steps” to institute a “safe, orderly and humane system that reflects our American values.”
“There is more work to do to equip our CBP personnel and border communities with the resources they need,” Ruiz said. “That is why I advocated directly to the White House for engagement with local government entities and organizations to prepare for the end of Title 42.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed executive orders in November citing the invasion clauses of the U.S. Constitution to justify deploying National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety personnel to deter and detain border crossers, throngs of which have been videotaped crossing the Rio Grande. Others have used land crossings, where they’ve been processed by Border Patrol agents.
The CBP said that 1.54 million “enforcement actions” involving crossers have occurred to date in fiscal year 2022-23. In 2021-22, the figure was 2.76 million.
“Communities along the southern border, especially in Texas, are already at their breaking point,” Calvert said. “The level of human suffering is only going to increase as our Border Patrol officers, local governments and nongovernmental organizations become overwhelmed. There’s no question that regions all around the border, including Riverside County, will see a dramatic increase in the number of migrants funneled through our communities.”
According to Van Wagenen, county agencies, along with state officials and nonprofits, have worked in concert to prevent the drop-offs from adding to the county’s homeless population.
He said that while “welfare benefits … are not being provided” to the entrants, “short-term safety net services,” including motel rooms, meals and health screenings, have been.
“Generally, we are able to help move families and individuals to their next destination within two days,” the CEO said.
From March 2021 to April 2023, the county expended $9.9 million to cover these costs, Van Wagenen said, adding that all of the expenditures have been reimbursed by the state and federal governments.
“There is an urgent need for intervention, especially given the uncertainty,” he said. “We are actively working with state and federal agencies … to relieve the strain placed on the county.”
Calvert said several measures should be put in effect immediately, including turning off “the incentive to send unaccompanied alien children to the border” and reforming the asylum process “to stop abuse of the system while protecting those valid claims.”
Ruiz said that “comprehensive reform that modernizes our border management” would promote stability and deliver “an earned pathway to citizenship.”
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