Migrants in Mexico rush international bridge in El Paso in tense border showdown

Anna Giaritelli

March 13, 12:25 PM March 13, 12:26 PM

A large group of migrants in Ciudad Juarez in northern Mexico pushed past Mexican customs officials and attempted to run across an international bridge into El Paso, Texas, in a tense incident over the weekend.

Video taken by witnesses and migrants showed several hundred people pushing through federal police border checkpoints and onto the Paso Del Norte International Bridge shortly before 1:30 p.m. local time Sunday.

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All vehicular traffic was shut down for several hours as people lined the bridge from wall to wall. It was not clear and the U.S. government has not disclosed what prompted the group of migrants to meet at and rush the bridge.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the federal agency whose officers inspect pedestrians and vehicles on the northern side of the bridge, sent in officers and members of its Mobile Field Force to secure its side of the bridge, "temporarily preventing the northbound flow of traffic after a large group of individuals formed on the Mexican side of the border and approached the international boundary posing a potential threat to make a mass entry," the agency said in a statement.

A WHD News reporter claimed 1,000 people tried to storm the bridge, but CBP has not confirmed such a figure. Coverage by the El Paso Times indicated a couple hundred people in total were present.

CBP placed physical barriers at the bridge. All cars and trucks were unable to cross the bridge through the afternoon. CBP proactively placed other physical barriers at nearby crossings, the Bridge of the Americas and the Station Crossing.

A few hundred people protested at the center of the bridge, where U.S. officials held the line to prevent the group from entering the U.S. side of the bridge.

CBP pulled an unspecified number of its Border Patrol agents who work along the river between the ports of entry, as well as Office of Field Operations special response team members, to beef up the agency's presence at the bridge before it reopened to traffic shortly before 7 p.m. local time on Sunday.

El Paso has seen past attempted mass entries between the ports of entry, including last October when a group of migrants tried to enter amid frustrations over U.S. immigration policy that allows some illegal immigrants to be released into the country and others to be turned away.

During his visit to the U.S.-Mexico border earlier this year, President Joe Biden visited the nearby Bridge of the Americas.

WATCH: Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson calls Biden ‘inconsistent’ on Title 42

Steff Thomas

December 24, 05:23 PM December 24, 05:30 PM

The Biden administration has maintained that the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t over, but the rush to end Title 42 shows how “inconsistent” their claims are, according to Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR).

Hutchinson said President Joe Biden has a “separate agenda” and is not merely trying to manage the public health crisis, but is using the emergency to extend Medicaid requirements.

“The fact is, we still have COVID. We still have flu. And we manage the COVID in the same way that you manage the flu, not in the sense of a public health emergency,” Arkansas's governor said Friday on Fox Business's The Evening Edit.

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“Totally inconsistent. We need to continue [Title 42]. He knows what's coming ahead,” Hutchinson told host Elizabeth MacDonald. “It's unacceptable to say that we've got to end this now.”

Title 42 of the Public Health Service Act of 1944 was enacted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in March 2020, one week after then-President Donald Trump declared a national emergency over the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020.

The policy gave the Trump administration the ability to deny the admission of goods and people who posed a risk of spreading a communicable disease. Under the law, all noncitizens seeking asylum at ports of entry and those who crossed illegally between the ports were to be expelled back immediately into Mexico and not be taken into custody by Border Patrol.

The Arkansas Republican said the administration should keep the policy in place until April to give Congress time to enact specific changes to the Trump-era immigration policy.

“[There are] other ways to approach it that would protect our border. Congress needs to address it in that fashion,” he said.

Top Biden officials, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, have been silent about the end of Title 42, even as they’ve worked tirelessly to promote vaccination and other COVID-related restrictions. Hutchinson came to Fauci’s defense.

“While he should speak out and be clear, and he doesn't need to get in the political arena, he's a public health official, [so] he ought to stick to the public health requirements,” the governor said, since it’s a topic overlaid with politics.

But sometimes, Hutchinson noted, the leadership has to reverse what public health officials say in order to keep the economy moving or to protect the border. “We've got to put a practicality to our border security,” he said.

“Title 42 needs to continue, not because Dr. Fauci is saying we have a public health crisis, but because it is the practical thing that we need to do right now. Until we enact other options to protect our border: That's the bottom line,” Hutchinson said.

The policy was slated to expire on Wednesday but was kept from termination after Chief Justice John Roberts issued a temporary administrative stay following an emergency plea from 19 Republican-led states.

The Biden administration also asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday for a delay in the termination, asking for the program to conclude no sooner than next week.