WASHINGTON, D.C. — Questions continue to swirl about the end of Title 42, the controversial public health measure President Joe Biden wants to end on Monday.

A ruling from a federal judge in the coming days could, however, keep it in place.

WHAT IS AT STAKE?

Title 42 is the pandemic public health policy that immediately expelled over a million asylum-seeking migrants during the pandemic.

Former President Donald Trump initially put the policy in place and it has continued into the Biden presidency.

Data has shown the migrants turned away over the last several years were primarily from Mexico, although they also came from other places in Central America, like Guatemala and Honduras.

Individuals from Caribbean nations like Haiti were also reportedly turned away as were some from European countries like Belarus.

Human rights groups believe the U.S. should be accommodating to those seeking persecution from other countries.

U.S. law requires the United States to accept refugees who have "well-founded" fears of persecution.

Opponents are arguing this is going to create a mass migration mess at the border and that the country is not prepared to handle the influx of migrants.

WAITING ON COURT RULING

The country is waiting on District Court Judge Robert Summerhays to rule on whether the Biden administration can end the policy.

It's possible Summerhays rules in favor of Republican attorneys general who brought the lawsuit. Summerhays has previously ruled in favor of conservatives on consequential issues.

No matter what the Trump appointee decides, an appeal is likely.

ARE WE READY?

If the judge allows Biden to end Title 42, the logical question is whether the U.S. is prepared for what could happen at the border.

Republicans and some Democrats believe there needs to be a better plan.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as Border Patrol, has told reporters they are prepared.

"The Secretary and I have had the opportunity to meet with our front line officers, agents and our workforce to ensure that we are prepared for May 23^rd and beyond," U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz said Tuesday during a border event with DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

DHS has worked to mobilize staff and volunteers to the border in anticipation of a surge of asylum-seeking migrants when Title 42 ends.

Temporary facilities have been promised to be built as well.

Currently, around 8,000 people a day show up at America's borders. The Department of Homeland Security has said that it is preparing for the possibility of 18,000 each day once the measure is lifted.

Mexican immigration authorities have dissolved a caravan of almost 7,000 people that had departed the southern city of Tapachula and was headed to Mexico City, according to a statement released on Saturday by the Mexican National Institute of Migration (INM).

The migrants were given a migratory document that accredits their regular stay in Mexico, according to the INM.

Mexico's immigration authority held talks with spokespeople for the caravan and representatives from Central America, Venezuela, Haiti, and other countries.

The INM said, "with the agreements reached thanks to our talks, migrants are prevented from being victims of criminals who are dedicated to human trafficking or traffickers who expose the migrants to unsafe conditions."

Many of the migrants are from Venezuela, and many of them are families with children. There are at least three different groups divided among the cities of Huixtla, Mapastepec, and Escuintla in the Mexican state of Chiapas. A large number of them are still waiting to process migration documents to continue their journey to the U.S.

The Human Rights Watch released a report on June 6, stating that migrants and asylum-seekers who enter Mexico through its southern border face abuses and struggle to obtain protection or legal status.

Most migrants and asylum-seekers said they do not attempt to request protection at an official border crossing, fearing agents from the INM would deport them, according to the HRW report.

Some migrants and asylum-seekers told the HRW that "they sought protection at the border and were turned away by INM agents or security guards. Many said INM agents dissuaded them from seeking refugee status in Mexico and pressured them to accept voluntary returns to their countries."

“Oaxaca is a very poor place, and there were not many things to eat because there is no money. There is no work there, and there, we planted milpa and pigweed. There wasn’t much else to eat besides that.

I was a little girl and we didn't have many clothes or shoes. When I was 14 years old, I decided to come here because children’s life was very sad there. I travelled with my brother.

The first time I came, it was raining a lot, so we were walking in mud and our clothes were very wet, so we walked and we arrived. We almost made it to where we were going to get to catch a ride to get here to California, and migration caught us and threw us back and so we went back again.

We met the one who crosses the people in the desert, and we decided to come with him. Fifty or 40, yeah, there were a lot of us.

From there, the coyote, he took us there in the desert, and we walked three nights and three days, and during the day, we rested and at night we walked. Many people get tired and die in the desert. I saw human hair and human bones.

We felt tired, we were hungry, and very thirsty too, because we didn't bring much water.

We arrived in Arizona.

From there, the van came to pick us up. We were like more than 20 people that got on that van.
We were packed on top of each other and there are people who are bigger than us and they are heavy, so when we got there, we had a lot of pain in our feet, we had blisters, like pus inside our feet.

I think it was more than 5 hours. I arrived in Oxnard, and from there, they brought me to Watsonville.

Yes, we felt— the first thing was mostly sadness. Leaving my family, like mom, it's very sad to remember. It's very sad to remember that, but for us it was very difficult to get out our village and walk in the desert, and we got there.

When I started working I was able to help my mother. I was able to send her a little bit of money.

I've been here for more than 15 years and I couldn't see my mom again because she died. It's been a long time since I could see her, and she died.

The hope I have is that someday they will give us papers so we can go back to Oaxaca to see my dad because my dad is still alive, and that is the hope I have. That is my hope.

My name is Alma and I am a farmworker.

The migrants who were flown from Florida to Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts have been taken to a military base.

Approximately 50 migrants were offered shelter and support services at Joint Base Cape Cod, according to CNN.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he sent the migrants to Massachusetts so other communities can share the "burden" of the crisis at the Southern border.

NBC News reports that the number of migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border is approaching 8,000 per day.

“There is also going to be buses and there will likely be more flights, but I’ll tell you this, the legislature gave me $12 million and we’re gonna spend every penny of that to make sure that we’re protecting the people of the State of Florida," DeSantis said.

The U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts said she will speak with the Justice Department about DeSantis' treatment of the migrants. Some of the migrants were reportedly told they were going to Boston.

President Joe Biden said the move by DeSantis and other Republican governors is "un-American."

"Instead of working with us on solutions, Republicans are playing politics with human beings, using them as props," Biden said. "What they're doing is simply wrong... it's reckless."

New York City Mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency on Friday as the city’s shelter system has become strained largely due to an influx of migrants.

Adams said that 17,000 migrants, mainly from South America, have been bused to NYC from southern states. He said because the migrants are not legally able to obtain work permits, they rely on government resources for food and shelter.

Adams estimates the city will spend nearly $1 billion this year on housing migrants.

“Our compassion is limitless, but our resources are not,” Adams said.

The mayor placed the blame with politicians who have arranged for buses to travel to Democratic-led cities. Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has defended the process, saying that border states should not shoulder the burden of accepting asylum seekers.

Adams said hampering efforts to assist migrants is the lack of coordination between New York City and Texas. The Texas Tribune reported that Texas officials have not been in contact with Adams.

The city was left unprepared for the influx, Adams said.

The state of emergency directs departments to expedite the building of humanitarian relief centers to house migrants. The city is also suspending land-use requirements as part of Adams’ order.

The City of New York is asking for financial support from state and federal governments.

File video above: U.S. preps for rising migration when Title 42 ends

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked Title 42 — a controversial rule that's allowed U.S. authorities to expel more than 1 million migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.

Tuesday's court order leaves the Biden administration without one of the key tools it had deployed to address the thousands of migrants arriving at the border on a daily basis and could restore access to asylum for arriving migrants.

While the rule was drafted by the Trump administration during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden administration has relied heavily on it to manage the increase of migrants at the border.

District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington, D.C., found the Title 42 order to be "arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act."

Prior to Title 42, all migrants arrested at the border were processed under immigration law. Thousands of migrants sent back to Mexico have been waiting along the border in shelters. Officials have previously raised concerns about what the end of Title 42 may portend, given limited resources and a high number of people trying to enter the country.

CNN has reached out to the White House, Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security for comment.

Sullivan faulted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which issued the public health order, for "its decision to ignore the harm that could be caused" by issuing the policy. He said the CDC also failed to consider alternative approaches, such as letting migrants self-quarantine in homes of US-based friends, family, or shelters. The agency, he said, should have reexamined its approach when vaccines and tests became widely available.

"With regard to whether defendants could have 'ramped up vaccinations, outdoor processing, and all other available public health measures,'... the court finds the CDC failed to articulate a satisfactory explanation for why such measures were not feasible," Sullivan wrote.

The judge also concluded that the policy did not rationally serve its purpose, given that COVID-19 was already widespread throughout the United States when the policy was rolled out.

"Title 42 was never about public health, and this ruling finally ends the charade of using Title 42 to bar desperate asylum seekers from even getting a hearing," American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt, who argued the case, said in a statement.

The injunction request came from the ACLU, along with other immigrant advocacy groups, and involves all demographics, including single adults and families. Unaccompanied children were already exempt from the order.

The public health authority was invoked at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and has been criticized by immigrant advocates, attorneys and health experts who argue it has no health basis and puts migrants in harm's way.

Sullivan had previously blocked the Biden administration from expelling migrant families with children apprehended at the US-Mexico border.

Earlier this year, the CDC announced plans to terminate the order. The CDC said at the time it's no longer necessary given current public health conditions and the increased availability of vaccines and treatments for COVID-19.

But in May, a federal judge in Louisiana blocked the Biden administration from ending Title 42.

Since that court order, the administration has continued to rely on Title 42 and most recently, expanding it to include Venezuelan migrants who have arrived at the US southern border in large numbers.

Despite scorching temperatures, migrants continue to arrive at the southern border in ever-growing numbers.

“You can't compare this current surge to anything that's happened in the past,” said Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council. 

Judd tells Newsy the surge is severely overwhelming the roughly 18,000 agents he represents.  

“Over the weekend we were holding 10,000 people in custody. We don't have the number of agents to watch 10,000 people,” Judd said. 

New government estimates show last month the U.S. took into custody around 210,000 migrants — the highest monthly total in over 20 years and a significant increase from previous months. 

As a result, Border Patrol facilities are now up to 700% over capacity. That means more officers supervising migrants in custody and less agents patrolling the border.

“Our agents aren't actually on the border doing the job they were hired to do,” Judd said, adding that one agent could be assigned to watch 600 immigrants.

“There's no way in the world that one person is going to be able to ensure the safety and protection of all of those 600 people in that pod," he said.

Judd has been in the Border Patrol for over 20 years and was a supporter and close ally of President Donald Trump. 

While some observers point to unrest in Central America and beyond as the driving force behind the migration surge, Judd blames President Biden’s policies. 

“People are crossing the border illegally knowing that they're going to be released into the United States never to have to leave this country,” Judd said.  

The Biden administration is keeping in place a Trump policy allowing it to expel most migrants during the pandemic. But it’s also releasing into the country an increasing number of families and unaccompanied children.  

Judd says that’s not only encouraging more people to migrate, it’s also a COVID hazard.  

“In the Rio Grande Valley right now, we've got over 80 agents that are out with COVID-19,” he said. 

At the same time, his union supports agents who are hesitant to get vaccines they consider “experimental.” 

NEWSY'S BEN SCHAMISSO: "I'm not sure I follow how you can be concerned with COVID-19 on the one hand, and on the other hand also understand why some agents would refuse to be vaccinated."  

JUDD: “There's other mitigating ways that you can take care of COVID: You can wear PPE, you can social distance, you can do all of those different things to mitigate COVID.” 

As for the Biden White House, it blames Donald Trump’s dismantling of the asylum system for the rush at the border. 

Administration officials say they’re working hard to rebuild a "fair, orderly, and humane immigration system, including by expanding lawful pathways to the United States and discouraging irregular migration.” 

This story was originally reported by Ben Schamisso on Newsy.com.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — As he ended Texas’ coronavirus restrictions Wednesday over the objections of public health officials, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has tried shifting concern about the virus’ spread to migrants with COVID-19 crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, though without evidence they are a significant factor.

The focus by Abbott and other Republicans on migrant families has drawn criticism about invoking a long history in the U.S. of wrongly suggesting migrants spread diseases.

Twin pressures are bearing down on the Texas border as, beginning Wednesday, state residents no longer are required to wear face coverings after eight months under a mask mandate. Infection levels remain higher in the region than in most others, and rising numbers of immigrants are now overwhelming federal detention facilities.

Arriving migrants who test positive are being directed to local hotels for isolation, as Abbott and Democratic President Joe Biden fight over who is responsible for helping them.

Doctors on the border fear Abbott repealed coronavirus safeguards too soon and threatens a fragile decline in COVID-19 cases. The surge of immigration to the border is also worrying, they say, but far from the biggest factor in containing the virus’ spread.

“It’s not trivial,” said Dr. James Castillo, the public health authority for Cameron County in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for migrant apprehensions along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Is it the biggest source of infection to our whole community?” he said, referring to migrants arriving with the virus. “No, it’s maybe one source, and there’s a lot of different sources. And it’s a shame that we’re going to create new sources by dropping the restrictions.”

Abbott, under pressure from conservatives to end COVID restrictions, announced last week that Texas would fully reopen, allowing full capacity in restaurants and bars and large gatherings that had been considered dangerous. Biden criticized the decision as “Neanderthal thinking,” and Abbott shot back by alleging Biden was “releasing COVID-positive illegal immigrants in our state” by easing some of former President Donald Trump’s toughest border policies.

Abbott has rejected offers from the Biden administration for help with testing and quarantining migrants, saying that job belongs entirely to the federal government.

“The federal government has the responsibility to fund the testing of anybody coming here who does have COVID,” Abbott said during a trip to the border Tuesday.

The Department of Homeland Security said it would fully fund testing, isolation, and quarantine of migrants, but that Abbott needed to sign off.

HOUSTON —

The Biden administration is not requiring FBI fingerprint background checks of caregivers at its rapidly expanding network of emergency sites to hold thousands of immigrant teenagers, alarming child welfare experts who say the waiver compromises safety.

In the rush to get children out of overcrowded and often unsuitable Border Patrol sites, President Joe Biden's team is turning to a measure used by previous administrations: tent camps, convention centers and other huge facilities operated by private contractors and funded by U.S. Health and Human Services. In March alone, the Biden administration announced it will open eight new emergency sites across the Southwest adding 15,000 new beds, more than doubling the size of its existing system.

These emergency sites don't have to be licensed by state authorities or provide the same services as permanent HHS facilities. They also cost far more, an estimated $775 per child per day.

And to staff the sites quickly, the Biden administration has waived vetting procedures intended to protect minors from potential harm.

Staff and volunteers directly caring for children at new emergency sites don't have to undergo FBI fingerprint checks, which use criminal databases not accessible to the public and can overcome someone changing their name or using a false identity.

HHS issued a statement Friday saying that direct care staff and volunteers "must pass public record criminal background checks." Public records checks generally take less time but are reliant on the subject providing correct information.

The agency says those giving direct care are supervised by federal employees or others who have passed fingerprint-based background checks. "In the Emergency Intake Sites, HHS is implementing the standards of care used for children in an emergency response setting," the agency said.

During former President Donald Trump's administration, HHS for months did not ensure FBI fingerprint checks or child welfare screenings were done for workers at a large camp in Tornillo, Texas. An Associated Press investigation in 2018 also found staff at another camp at Homestead, Florida, were not given routine screenings to rule out allegations of child abuse or neglect.

HHS' inspector general warned then that FBI fingerprint checks "provide a unique safeguard" over most commercial background checks that search a person's name.

"While the various background checks could identify some past criminal convictions or sexual offenses, these checks were not as extensive as the FBI fingerprint background checks," the inspector general found.

Laura Nodolf, the district attorney in Midland, Texas, where HHS opened an emergency site this month, said that without fingerprint checks, "we truly do not know who the individual is who is providing direct care."

"That's placing the children under care of HHS in the path, potentially, of a sex offender," Nodolf said. "They are putting these children in a position of becoming potential victims."

Dr. Amy Cohen, a child psychiatrist who is executive director of the immigration advocacy group Every Last One, noted that HHS requires fingerprint checks of relatives who seek to take in children as part of a vetting process that takes more than 30 days on average.

"Failure to check fingerprints of frontline facility staff exposes vulnerable migrant children to a significant danger of physical and sexual abuse," she said.

The Biden administration has 18,000 children and teenagers in its custody, a figure that has risen almost daily over the last several weeks. While Biden continues to expel most adults and many families crossing the border, he has declined to reinstate expulsions of unaccompanied immigrant children, which stopped last year after a now-stayed federal court order.

More than 5,000 youths are in border custody, many of them in a South Texas tent facility with limited space, food and access to the outdoors. But Border Patrol is apprehending hundreds more minors than HHS is releasing every day — a difference of 325 just on Thursday.

At the downtown Dallas convention center, one of HHS' emergency sites, almost all of its 2,300 beds were filled just one week after it opened this month.

Child advocates say that rather than opening more unlicensed emergency facilities, the administration must speed up placing children with sponsors, especially the approximately 40% of youths in custody who have a parent in the country ready to take them.

HHS has tried to expedite processing of minors in recent weeks, allowing some youths to be placed with parents while fingerprint checks are pending and authorizing the use of government funds to pay for airfare when a child is released.

Ana, the mother of a 17-year-old teen detained in Dallas, told AP said her son fled gangs trying to recruit him in El Salvador and hoped to join her in Virginia. After an eight-day journey, the teenager crossed the U.S.-Mexico border on March 9. Eight days would pass until she heard from authorities at the border that they had him in custody.

She received a 10-minute call from him on March 20, after he was taken to the Dallas facility. It was the first time she's spoken to him since he entered the country. She says she has repeatedly called HHS' Office of Refugee Resettlement to ask if they would release him to her family, but they have refused, saying they have to process her case. In the meantime, she's ready to present documentation proving she is his mother and fit to take him.

"I don't understand why they are making it so difficult," said Ana, who is not being identified by her last name to protect her son's privacy. "I know that we are in a pandemic, but maybe I think that it is that they are behind schedule, that maybe there are a lot of people there."

Tornillo and Homestead were sharply criticized by Democrats and child welfare experts who warned of the potential trauma of detaining thousands of teenagers without adequate support.

Volunteers from the American Red Cross provided care at the first two emergency HHS sites, a converted camp for oil workers in Midland, Texas, and the Dallas convention center. Those volunteers are now being phased out.

The Red Cross and HHS for several days refused to acknowledge that the volunteers weren't given FBI fingerprint checks. The Red Cross first said that all of its volunteers underwent background checks when they joined the group. On Tuesday, the group said it was "refreshing" checks on about 300 volunteers sent to care for children and that it had not found any new red flags.

HHS spokesman Mark Weber said he could not yet identify which companies or groups will now step in. The department asked contractors in mid-March to submit bids to provide child care and transportation.

Leecia Welch, an attorney for the nonprofit National Center for Youth Law who monitors the treatment of immigrant children, said lawyers would pay "close attention to whether this temporary waiver becomes standard operating practice."

"Given the urgency of the current placement crisis, families deserve the same flexibility as the for-profit companies contracting with the federal government," she said.

Video: Hundreds of migrant cross U.S.-Mexico river border

Safety concerns have already been raised about the Midland camp. One official working there noted a lack of new clothes and caseworkers when teenagers initially arrived, and state regulators last week warned that the water on site may not be safe, forcing U.S. authorities to give teens bottles until they could arrange for water deliveries.

Michelle Saenz-Rodriguez, a Dallas-based immigration lawyer, described the Dallas convention center as reminiscent of a barracks but "very welcoming." She visited the convention center in its first days as a volunteer for Catholic Charities and said that cots for more than 2,000 boys have been placed in socially distanced rows in a ballroom.

After being bused to the site, the boys get clean clothes, a pillow, a blanket and a COVID-19 test, Saenz-Rodriguez said. She saw them last week sitting together at tables, talking and playing card games. Most did not understand why they'd been brought to Dallas or what would happen to them next, she said.

"Their number one question is 'How long are we going to be here? What's going to happen to us?'" Saenz-Rodriguez said.

___

Associated Press journalist Jake Bleiberg in Dallas contributed to this report.

BROWNSVILLE, Texas —

Video above: US reports record surge of migrant children

Paying a smuggler, Edgar Mejia could afford to take only one child with him to the United States. He chose his 3-year-old "warrior" son, leaving his 7- and 12-year-olds with their mother in Honduras.

"Pitifully, I had use him like a passport to get here," Mejia said last week after picking up milk from volunteers at a Brownsville, Texas, bus station for the last leg of their journey to join relatives in Atlanta. "I am here because of him."

Mejia, 32, and his son, who paid a smuggler $6,000 for a "new dream" that Honduras couldn't provide, are among the Border Patrol's nearly 170,000 encounters with migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border in March, a 20-year high. The total, announced Thursday, includes nearly 19,000 children traveling alone, the highest monthly number on record.

About four in 10 border encounters last month were with families and unaccompanied children — many from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — at a time when policies in the U.S. and Mexico favor them staying in the United States while they seek asylum. It marks the third sharp jump in Central American asylum-seekers in seven years.

For decades, predominantly Mexican men crossed the border illegally, with many returning for visits until heightened border security made going back and forth more difficult. Migration rose and fell but was fairly steady and predictable.

Over the last decade, a complex mix of factors has produced periodic, dramatic spikes, especially among families and children, who get more legal protections and require more care. The Government Accountability Office identified 10 potential causes for a spike in the number of unaccompanied children at the border in 2014, including poverty, violence and perceptions of U.S. immigration policy.

A large increase in family arrivals in 2019 followed an end to the Trump administration's practice of generally separating parents from their children at the border. The latest jump follows ferocious storms in Central America and President Joe Biden ending his predecessor's hardline immigration policies, though many changes attributed to Biden are rumors or have been fabricated by smugglers to generate business.

The "root causes" prompting Central Americans to leave haven't changed, said Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, whose temporary shelter has been hosting 400 to 500 people nightly, compared with a peak of about 1,000 in 2019.

"I think that it's simply that the traffickers use whatever is happening in the United States to extort the families, to lure them, to create a narrative that says, 'Come right now. The president is going to let you in,'" she said.

Migrants, in dozens of interviews over the last two weeks, generally said circumstances in Central America led them to the U.S. When asked about Biden, nearly all said his relatively pro-immigration positions influenced their thinking.

Smuggling fees vary widely, with some paying up to $10,000 a person in the Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. There is often a discount for additional relatives. The trip can take weeks in cars, buses and trucks, ending when an inflatable raft reaches the banks of the Rio Grande and families and children turn themselves in to Border Patrol agents.

Mejia said he and his son were in a group of 18 Hondurans on a trip divided into four parts, including one leg traveling in a trailer from Mexico City to Monterrey and a final stretch in an open-top boxcar to the border city of Reynosa. Children were told to be quiet when the trailer came to military checkpoints.

"(Smugglers) tell you it's going to go well, but the reality is different," Mejia said, turning to his 3-year-old son at the bus station in Brownsville, a border city of about 200,000 people on the Rio Grande. "I have a warrior here. We suffered greatly."

Douglas Perez, 24, said he stood with 10 people in a covered pickup truck, including his wife and two children, ages 4 and 1. He held the baby, planting his palm on the roof to avoid falling over. They were released in the U.S. with notices to report to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office.

Perez, who paid a smuggler $27,000 to bring his family to the U.S., said he left the western highlands of Guatemala because his job picking corn no longer provided enough food to eat.

Carlos Enrique Linga, who was released from custody with his 5-year-old daughter, said he could no longer afford new clothes for his family in Guatemala after rains destroyed their house. That prompted him to try to join a friend in Tennessee to earn money. His wife, 2-year-old twins and newborn stayed in Guatemala because they couldn't pay a smuggler.

"Our houses got carried away by the current, the water," Linga said after breakfast in a migrant shelter in Mission, Texas. "Our ranch is no more. We are without a house."

The Border Patrol had 168,195 encounters with migrants last month, the highest since March 2001. The numbers aren't directly comparable because more than half of those stopped last month had been quickly expelled from the country under federal pandemic-related powers that deny people the right to seek asylum. Being expelled carries no legal consequences, so many people make multiple attempts.

Biden has exempted unaccompanied children from expulsion, allowing them to stay in the U.S. while pursuing asylum claims and live with "sponsors," usually parents or close relatives.

Mexico has been reluctant to take back Central American families with young children, especially in Tamaulipas state bordering the Rio Grande Valley, so many of them are being released in the U.S. while their claims are considered by immigration authorities.

Migrants who enter the Rio Grande Valley as single adults or in families with children 7 and older are expelled to Reynosa, an organized-crime stronghold. Unfounded rumors are rampant in a plaza there where migrants plan their next move. Last week, rumors spread that the U.S. would open its borders April 5 or that the borders would be open for Biden's first 100 days in office.

Hermelindo Ak, a corn grower, heard in Guatemala that chances were better for families but didn't know how a child's age was considered. Information seemed to change "day to day," he said.

He was expelled with his 17-year-old son, then sent his son alone for a second attempt after learning unaccompanied children can stay in the U.S. Ak, 40, planned to return home to his wife and other children, who stayed in Guatemala because they couldn't afford to pay a smuggler.