CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico — Dawn had barely illuminated the turbid waters of the Rio Suchiate at the border with Guatemala when the boatmen — plunging long poles in the muck to propel their vessels — began to transport their daily load: a polyglot contingent of migrants from across the globe. All had a common destination: the United States.
"We didn't make it to America before the end of Title 42, but still we will continue forward," declared Félix Bandres, 61, who led a church group of some two dozen Venezuelans, including women and children, crowded on the raft crafted of wooden planks secured to inflatable inner tubes from tractor tires. "It is need, and the search of a better life, that is driving us."
Officials in Washington assert that the numbers of illicit crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border have declined since the May 11 end of Title 42. The pandemic-era rule, put in place by the Trump administration and initially retained by the Biden White House, allowed the Border Patrol to turn back hundreds of thousands of migrants without affording them a chance to apply for political asylum or seek other relief from within the United States.
