SAN DIEGO — Thousands of migrants are desperately waiting at the border in the final hours before Title 42 expires.
Entire families are waiting for Border Patrol to pick them up, process them and take them to their destinations in the U.S., but the possibility of them getting asylum is uncertain.
The hands of children and their families are reaching through steel beams at the San Ysidro border in San Diego for food, water, or anything they can get. Mothers are in tears as they wait to learn their fate.
"Well, the most difficult part is that. The discomfort, more than anything for the baby, because we're fine. But babies don't understand that we have to sleep on the ground. The cold. They don't understand,” said Stephanie, a migrant from Colombia.
She is at the border with her almost 1-year-old son and her husband. They’ve been without shelter for two days and her son is now sick with a cold.
Lilian Serrano with the Southern Border Communities Coalition calls it a human rights crisis.
"[What] we're seeing is three years of people congregating in Northern Mexico trying to access asylum and now we have folks in the thousands. Now we are at very small capacity to process them and we are going to have to face the reality of three years,” said Serrano.
Serrano says a few people from this camp are being picked up by Border Patrol. The migrants believe they’re being processed and then given asylum; this after paying thousands of dollars to smugglers who bring them to the border.
"An odyssey. A complete travesty to get here. A lot of money. A lot of intermediates. A lot of mafia. If you don't have money, you can't cross,” said Ellena and Jaquelin, two migrants from Colombia.
They’re desperate to make it across the border, all while some people fear the influx of those crossing will create bigger problems.
"We don't expect necessarily the whole world rushing to our borders, but we do have to submit to reality and that's we closed our borders for three years. We could have used that time to process smaller groups but now we have a lot of need. Small capacity,” said Serrano.
Editor’s Note: Quotes from migrants have been translated from Spanish to English for this report.
What is Title 42?
The order authorized the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to immediately remove migrants, including people seeking asylum, seeking entry into the U.S. at the land borders.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued the order under the Trump administration in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. officials turned away migrants more than 2.8 million times under Title 42 since the policy began.
The order is ending because the Biden administration announced an end to the COVID-19 public health emergency.
The lifting of the Title 42 order does not mean the border is open. According to the U.S. Homeland Security, the U.S. will return to using Title 8 immigration authorities "to expeditiously process and remove individuals who arrive at the U.S. border unlawfully." The law outlines processes for deportation and carries strict penalties, including five and 10-year bans on reentry for people deported.
WATCH MORE ON ABC10: Immigrant-focused nonprofits to see greater need for resources once Title 42 ends
