Arizona border city releases 190 migrants on streets as Yuma ends Title 42

• The city of Yuma on Friday made its first migrant release to the streets in two years
• About 280 migrants were released in morning and afternoon batches
• The mayor appealed for peace in the community and said they are not criminals

Almost 300 newly arrived migrants were released by officials in Yuma, Arizona, on Friday, illustrating how border towns are struggling to cope with a huge influx of arrivals over the past week.

This coincides with the end of Title 42, and the lifting of a Trump-era ban designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

The result is that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is holding as many as 28,000 migrants in its facilities, far beyond its capacity, according to a local official.

On Thursday, Yuma’s mayor announced that CBP plans to release from the city migrants who haven’t gone through full processing, though he insisted they are being ‘vetted.’

On Friday afternoon, three white buses with black windows pulled up to the Yuma Public Safety Training Facility near the city’s airport.

The location is a closely guarded secret, but DailyMail.com was on hand to witness the release. A correspondence document says 141 have been released.

Streams of people could be seen climbing off the buses and being directed to a shaded holding area, where there was at least some shelter from the 96F temperature.

From there, it is understood they will be put on buses to take them to Phoenix.

It followed a similar release of about 140 people in a separate location in Yuma and nearby San Luis in the morning.

Yuma County Supervisor Jonathan Lines said the process is a claim that federal authorities simply cannot cope with.

‘It’s decompressing and the federal government relies on local and state governments to do its job,’ he said.

‘This is another failure of the Biden Administration to manage a problem they created with their open border policy.’

A day earlier, Mayor Douglas Nicholls urged the people of Yuma to remain calm.

‘These are people who are vetted at least to the point where the Border Patrol issues them notice to show up papers wherever they live in the country,’ he said.

‘They should follow the judicial process. Unfortunately, that process takes three to seven years to complete the entire process.’

And he insisted that the people released did not pose a danger.

‘I ask everyone, all our citizens to remain calm. No people convicted of crimes have been released,’ he said.

There was immediate hope that Friday might bring an easing of the crisis.

After a week-long build-up, the border wall outside Yuma was eerily quiet Friday morning.

The Biden administration has raised the message that it is imposing a tough new regime to turn away anyone who does not use a legal route of arrival.

Chris Clem, the former Yuma Sector Chief Border Patrol Agent, said it’s too early to celebrate.

‘The administration I’m sure they are working hard behind the scenes in Mexico. I’m sure they’re doing a lot to manage it,’ he said

‘And I believe that control things and play things.

‘Then the migrants are probably you know, trying to figure it out. Do they want to be caught in a hurry? Do they want to wait a few days and see what happens?’

Title 42 was activated by the Trump administration to prevent the spread of COVID-19. It was a public health measure that allowed border authorities to quickly deport arrivals before they could claim asylum.

But with the end of the pandemic, it finally ended at midnight eastern time on Thursday.

The Biden administration has rushed through the new restrictions, effectively restoring Trump’s ‘transit ban’, which allows the deportation of those arriving without seeking asylum in the countries they travel to.

Migrants can legally present themselves at the border if they use a mobile app, CBP One, to register in advance.

But an eleventh-hour legal challenge has blocked plans to more quickly release migrants from Border Patrol detention.

Administration officials also said it was too early to declare victory.

‘Throughout the night, we saw similar patterns to what we’ve seen over the past few days. We continue to encounter high levels of non-citizens at the border but we have not seen a significant increase overnight or an influx in the middle of the night,’ Blas Nuñez-Neto, the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for border and immigration policy, told reporters in a briefing call.

The images that surfaced after the Title 42 termination shed light on the magnitude of migrants hoping to cross the US after the end of the border ban during the pandemic.

A migrant camp in the Mexican border town of Matamoros can be seen stretching two miles in length – suggesting that, despite the Biden administration’s change in border protocol on Thursday, thousands more people are trying to cross.

In recent weeks, 10,000 people have been stopped every day as migrants rush to cross before the system is reformed.

Some talk about the influx with limited housing options in mind in some regions.

In upstate New York, many homeless veterans have been evicted from their hotels to make way for an influx of migrants.

The struggling veterans were only notified at the beginning of the week that they would be giving way for the migrants, a nonprofit veterans organization told The New York Post.

On Chicago’s South Shore, residents of heavily Democratic neighborhoods are outragedstrongly voted for President Biden in the last election spoke out against the hundreds of migrants brought to the area.

They say longtime residents are being forced into housing waiting lists, with many taking particular issue with a former South Shore High School used as housing for up to 500 migrants.

‘All these resources that are not coming to us now you want to overpay people who have never lived here before. It needs to be taken care of first and foremost before it happens!’ a woman demanded.

‘Many of these migrants are dumped without a plan in place to monitor and house them for a long time,’ explained another.

Although the blame has largely been shifted to the Biden administration, a reporter in Texas sparked outrage from Senator Ted Cruz after he asked what Republicans had done to help create workable policy on the US-Mexico border.

An angry Cruz shouted that the reporter ‘should be ashamed’ of his question, accusing him of ‘parroting’ the Democrat’s talking points and challenging him for statistics.

The awkward exchange saw other reporters rally to their fellow journalist’s defense, and Cruz angrily waved them off.

Cruz was in the Texan city of Brownsville, which borders the Mexican city of Matamoros, to witness the scenes as Title 42 was repealed.

He held a press conference with members of the Border Patrol, and issued a fiery condemnation of the Joe Biden administration for allowing the border chaos to unfold.