Why chaos looms at the US-Mexico border

Since MarchCBPCBP 2020 migrants trying to cross America’s south-west border have been expelled nearly 2.8m times using Title 42, a pandemic-inspired measure. Little wonder that President Joe Biden is prepared for chaotic scenes when the policy ends on May 11th. He has ordered 1,500 troops to the border to back up Customs and Border Protection () agents. Several border cities in Texas, including El Paso and Laredo, facing a surge of migrants for processing, have already declared a state of emergency. The result will be tough for migrants—and, assuming their numbers stay high, for Mr Biden.Title 42 allowed to rapidly process and expel migrants on public-health grounds, either to their own country or, in some cases, to Mexico, which had agreed to take back some nationalities as well as its own. Mr Biden first tried to end Title 42 in April 2022, but wrangling in the courts by Republican-led states, which have stressed border security, kept it alive until now. The regime that will replace it is an expansion of a stick-and-carrot approach that America has been trialling since late last year: expanding legal pathways while clamping down on those who do not use them.