For 19 months, business owners along the Texas-Mexico border have seen a drastic drop in customers because of COVID-19 travel restrictions. With land borders scheduled to reopen Nov. 8, they are banking on a return to pre-pandemic sales.

More than 70,000 migrants, mostly from Cuba and Central America, have been put into the program since its inception in late 2018 in California. The policy expanded to Texas in early 2019 and placed more than 20,000 asylum seekers in Ciudad Juárez. All the asylum seekers are tested for COVID-19 in Mexico before being allowed to enter the U.S., and any migrant that tests positive will need to quarantine and test negative before being allowed to enter, Garcia said. AdThe end of MPP is a part of President Joe Biden’s early, massive overhaul of Trump’s immigration programs. Ad“This isn’t the time to try to enter the United States because the door isn’t wide open,” he said.

A federal judge in Texas has extended the block on President Joe Biden’s deportation moratorium for two more weeks as the case continues to play out in court. Tipton originally issued a 14-day suspension of Biden’s moratorium on Jan. 26. The pause in deportations was part of Biden’s attempted day-one overhaul of several of former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. In his order Tipton, a Trump appointee who took the bench last year, said Texas would face more harm than the federal government if the extension was not granted. Citizenship and Immigration Services agencies as the Biden administration developed its final priorities, according to the Biden administration.

Three days into the Biden administration, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed his first lawsuit against the federal government. The lawsuit seeks an halt to one of the president's executive actions on immigration, a 100-day pause on some deportations. It also retains an enforcement focus on people who have been convicted of an “aggravated felony” as defined by federal immigration law. Biden’s attempt to prioritize enforcement resources on certain groups only, including recent crossers, is reminiscent of the Obama-era Priority Enforcement Program. Paxton is also currently involved in another lawsuit, filed in 2018, that sought to end the 2012 program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended 400,651 people on the southwest border during the 2020 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. “We’re already seeing the numbers increase.”From 2015 to 2018, apprehensions hovered between 415,000 to 553,000 before surging in 2019. During that time, the border saw an increase in family units and unaccompanied minors seeking asylum in the United States. In Texas, only the Laredo Border Patrol sector saw an increase in the number of unaccompanied minors apprehended, from 2,521 in 2019 to 2,641 in 2020, a 5 percent jump. In the other four sectors along the Texas-Mexico border, the number of minors apprehended without an adult dropped between 32 percent and 70 percent this year.