With only days until the end of Title 42, Border Patrol apprehended the highest-ever daily number of migrants.
Agents caught more than 10,000 migrants per day on both Monday and Tuesday, sources told Fox News, with the Border Patrol expecting even more apprehensions ahead of Title 42's end at midnight on Thursday.
Title 42, which former president Donald Trump instituted in 2020, allows agents to expedite illegal immigrant expulsions. President Joe Biden last month announced he would end the policy, prompting a rush on the border, with "long lines of migrants" amassing in expectation, Reuters reported. Biden admitted Tuesday that the border is "going to be chaotic," while embattled Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Title 42's end will "strain our workforce, our communities, and our entire system."
Fox News noted that the numbers are rapidly approaching what officials consider the worst-case scenario:
Officials and lawmakers have feared that migrants, believing they are more likely to be admitted to the U.S. once the order ends, will head to the border in numbers not even seen during the more than two-year migrant crisis so far. Officials had previously painted a worst-case scenario of up to 14,000 encounters a day.
Fox also reported that border officials will mass-release migrants at "bus stops, gas stations, supermarkets, and in towns and cities across the border," because "Customs and Border Protection facilities are already over capacity in multiple sectors."
"The dam is about to break," a Border Patrol source told Fox.