PHOENIX — Last May ABC15 covered the expiration of Title 42 extensively and a year later we’re looking at what has changed and what hasn’t.
Title 42 policy allowed the United States to turn away migrants at the border - in the midst of a public health crisis. It expired last year, meaning all migrants are processed under Title 8 code - which generally allows migrants more time to make asylum claims.
Last summer we heard from a Valley church offering support to new migrants whose asylum claims were being reviewed who said they saw numbers increase after Title 42 expired.
“Every week every week, every day every day,” said Hector Ramirez, the pastor at Iglesia Cristiana el Buen Pastor.
Earlier this year a border town rancher said dozens pour across the border on the edge of his property every day.
“Some people don't want to get caught and then the other group are migrants - men, women and children - they come here and they walk down this road to try to be apprehended,” said rancher Jim Chilton.
Between March 2020 and May 2023, six million migrant encounters were recorded by US Customs and Border Protection. The numbers split almost down the middle. 3.1 million migrants, or 51% were processed under Title 8, typically asylum claims. 2.9 million migrants were turned away at the border using Title 42 authority.
Of migrants turned away by Title 42, almost nine in ten were single adults. Only about 11% were classified as family units.
Title 8 inadmissibles were more evenly spread out. About half were single adults. 40% were families and 13% were unaccompanied minors.
Crossings at the border continue, both authorized and unauthorized.
“It's a secret. Migrants are dying and very few people know that,” said Tucson-based artist Alvaro Enciso.
Enciso immigrated legally from Colombia in the 1960s - and now travels across the southwest, building and planting crosses where migrants have died trying to navigate the desert.
“I have put up over 1,600 crosses. It's about 40,000 square miles. I have driven thousands of miles, hiked thousands of miles. And most of those crosses will never be seen by people,” Enciso told ABC15.
The non-profit Humane Borders partners with the Pima County Medical Examiner's office to calculate migrant deaths, more than 100 since Title 42's expiration.
“I needed to do this, because that connects me to my own roots as a migrant. But it also connects me as a human being to people are dying in my own backyard,” Enciso said.
Back in Phoenix, the Arizona State Senate is expected to vote on a bill Tuesday that would make crossing the border illegally a state crime.
