MATAMOROS, Mexico (AP) — Migrants rushed across the Mexico border Thursday, racing to enter the U.S. before pandemic-related asylum restrictions are lifted in a shift that threatens to put a historic strain on the nation’s beleaguered immigration system.

The imminent end of the rules known as Title 42 stirred fear among migrants that the changes would make it more difficult for them to stay in the U.S. And the Biden administration was dealt a potentially serious legal setback when a federal judge temporarily blocked its attempt to more quickly release migrants when Border Patrol holding stations are full.

With a late-night deadline looming, misinformation and confusion buffeted migrants as they paced the border at the Rio Grande, often unsure of where to go or what to do next.

At Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas, throngs of migrants — some clutching small children — waded across spring river currents, pushed through thickets to confront a border fortified with razor wire. Other migrants settled into shelters in northern Mexico, determined to secure an asylum appointment that can take months to schedule online.

Many migrants were acutely aware of looming policy changes designed to stop illegal crossings and encourage asylum seekers to apply online and consider alternative destinations, including Canada or Spain.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” said Jhoan Daniel Barrios, a former military police officer from Venezuela as he paced with two friends along the the border in Ciudad Juárez, across from El Paso, Texas, looking for a chance to seek refuge in the U.S.

“We don’t have any money left, we don’t have food, we don’t have a place to stay, the cartel is pursuing us,” said Barrios, whose wife was in U.S. custody. “What are we going to do, wait until they kill us?”

Last week, Barrios and his friends entered the U.S. and were expelled. They had little hope of a different result Thursday.

On the U.S. side of the river, many surrendered immediately to authorities and hoped to be released while pursuing their cases in backlogged immigration courts, which takes years.

It was not clear how many migrants were on the move or how long the surge might last. By Thursday evening, the flow seemed to be slowing in some locations, but it was not clear why, or whether crossings would increase again after the coronavirus-related restrictions expire.

A U.S. official reported the Border Patrol stopped some 10,000 migrants on Tuesday — nearly twice the level from March and only slightly below the 11,000 figure that authorities have said is the upper limit of what they expect after Title 42 ends.

More than 27,000 people were in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody, the official said.

“Our buses are full. Our planes are full,” said Pedro Cardenas, a city commissioner in Brownsville, Texas, just north of Matamoros, as recent arrivals headed to locations across the U.S.

President Joe Biden’s administration has been unveiling strict new measures to replace Title 42, which since March 2020 has allowed border officials to quickly return asylum seekers back over the border on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.

The new policies crack down on illegal crossings while also setting up legal pathways for migrants who apply online, seek a sponsor and undergo background checks. If successful, the reforms could fundamentally alter how migrants arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border.

But it will take time to see results. Biden has conceded the border will be chaotic for a while. Immigrant advocacy groups have threatened legal action. And migrants fleeing poverty, gangs and persecution in their homelands are still desperate to reach U.S. soil at any cost.

Many migrants were acutely aware of looming policy changes as they searched Thursday for an opportunity to turn themselves over to U.S. immigration authorities before the 11:59 EDT deadline.

While Title 42 prevented many from seeking asylum, it carried no legal consequences, encouraging repeat attempts. After Thursday, migrants face being barred from entering the U.S. for five years and possible criminal prosecution.

Holding facilities along the border already were far beyond capacity. But late Thursday, U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell, an appointee of President Donald Trump, halted the administration’s plan to begin releasing migrants with notices to report to an immigration office in 60 days when holding centers reach 125% capacity, or where people are held an average of 60 hours. The quick releases were to also be triggered when authorities stop 7,000 migrants along the border in a day.

The state of Florida argued the administration’s plan was nearly identical to another Biden policy previously voided in federal court. Earlier Thursday, the Justice Department said its new move was a response to an emergency and being prevented from carrying it out “could overwhelm the border and raise serious health and safety risks to noncitizens and immigration officials.”

Weatherell blocked the releases for two weeks and scheduled a May 19 hearing on whether to extend his order.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had already warned of more crowded Border Patrol facilities to come.

“I cannot overstate the strain on our personnel and our facilities,” he told reporters Thursday.

Even as migrants were racing to reach U.S. soil before the rules expire, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said smugglers were sending a different message. He noted an uptick in smugglers at his country’s southern border offering to take migrants to the United States and telling them the border was open starting Thursday.

On Wednesday, Homeland Security announced a rule to make it extremely difficult for anyone who travels through another country, like Mexico, or who did not apply online, to qualify for asylum. It also introduced curfews with GPS tracking for families released in the U.S. before initial asylum screenings.

The administration says it is beefing up the removal of migrants found unqualified to stay in the U.S. on flights like those that brought nearly 400 migrants home to Guatemala from the U.S. on Thursday.

Among them was Sheidi Mazariegos, 26, who arrived with her 4-year-old son just eight days after being detained near Brownsville.

“I heard on the news that there was an opportunity to enter, I heard it on the radio, but it was all a lie,” she said. Smugglers got her to Matamoros and put the two on a raft. They were quickly apprehended by Border Patrol agents.

Mazariegos said she made the trek because she is poor and hoped to reunite with her sisters living in the U.S.

At the same time, the administration has introduced expansive new legal pathways into the U.S.

Up to 30,000 people a month from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela can enter if they apply online with a financial sponsor and enter through an airport. Processing centers are opening in Guatemala, Colombia and elsewhere. Up to 1,000 can enter daily though land crossings with Mexico if they snag an appointment on an online app.

At shelters in northern Mexico, many migrants chose not to rush to the border and waited for existing asylum appointments or hopes of reserving one online.

At the Ágape Misión Mundial shelter in Tijuana, hundreds of migrants bided their time. Daisy Bucia, 37, and her 15-year-old daughter arrived at the shelter over three months ago from Mexico’s Michoacán state – fleeing death threats — and have an asylum appointment Saturday in California.

Bucia read on social media that pandemic-era restrictions were ending at the U.S.-Mexico border, but preferred to cross with certainty later.

“What people want more than anything is to confuse you,” Bucia said.

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SAN DIEGO (AP) — House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Monday during a visit to El Paso, Texas, that, “It’s more than a crisis. This is human heartbreak.” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday called the wave of migrants a difficult challenge but nothing new.

Spin and semantics aside, migration flows to the U.S. from Mexico are surging in a major way for the third time in seven years under Republican and Democratic presidents — and for similar reasons.

HOW HAVE FLOWS CHANGED SINCE JOE BIDEN BECAME PRESIDENT?

Border encounters — a widely-used but imperfect gauge that tells how many times U.S. authorities came across migrants — rose sharply during Donald Trump’s final months as president, from an unusually low 17,106 last April to 74,108 in December. Last month, encounters topped 100,000 for the first time since a four-month streak in 2019.

That’s only part of the picture, though. Who’s crossing is just as important a gauge as how many are making the attempt, if not even more.

Mexican adults fueled last year’s rise, a throwback to one of the largest immigration waves in U.S. history, from 1965 through the Great Recession of 2008. Last March, the Trump administration introduced pandemic-related powers to immediately expel people from the United States without an opportunity to seek asylum. Facing no consequences, Mexican men kept trying until they made it.

The percentage of encounters that were repeat crossers hit 38% in January, compared to a 7% rate in the 12-month period that ended in September 2019. The recidivism rate was 48% among Mexican adults during one two-week stretch last year in San Diego.

Families and children traveling alone, who enjoy more legal protections and require greater care, became a bigger part of the mix after Biden took office. They accounted for 29% of all encounters in February, up from 13% two months earlier.

The Border Patrol encountered 561 unaccompanied children on Monday, up from an average daily peak of 370 during Trump’s presidency in May 2019 and 354 during a peak in Barack Obama’s presidency in June 2014. A U.S. official provided Monday’s total to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because it was not intended for public release. The daily average was 332 in February, up 60% from a month earlier.

WHY ARE FAMILIES AND CHILDREN SUDDENLY COMING NOW?

Trump, responding to a massive increase in Central American families and children that peaked in May 2019, expanded his “Migrant Protection Protocols” policy to force asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court. It was unquestionably effective at deterring asylum — less than 1% have won their cases, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse — but asylum-seekers were exposed to violence in Mexico, as documented by advocacy group Human Rights First and others. Attorneys were extremely difficult to find in Mexico.

Other Trump-era policies included fast-track asylum proceedings inside U.S. Customs and Border Protection holding facilities, where access to attorneys was next to impossible. Agreements were struck with Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador for the U.S. to send asylum-seekers to the Central American countries with an opportunity to seek protection there instead.

Biden quickly jettisoned those Trump policies as cruel and inhumane, making good on campaign promises. He has kept in place Trump’s pandemic-related expulsion powers but exempted children traveling alone.

Biden wants Congress to give $4 billion to address root causes of migration in Central America such as poverty and violence, which have driven people to the U.S. for decades, including a surge of children in 2014.

WHAT IS THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION DOING?

In addition to ending Trump policies and seeking foreign aid, the Biden administration wants to speed the release of children to parents, relatives and others in the United States, avoiding detention conditions that drew widespread criticism during surges in 2014 and 2019.

The administration was scheduled to begin processing unaccompanied children as early as Wednesday at the Dallas Convention Center, days after establishing a makeshift facility in Midland, Texas. The U.S. official who spoke to the AP said the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was looking at additional holding facilities at Moffett Federal Airfield, near San Francisco, and in Pecos, Texas, as well as expanding into Donna, Texas, in a joint effort with Customs and Border Protection.

Nearly 1,900 of about 2,500 unaccompanied children in custody in the Rio Grande Valley on Monday were there longer than the 72-hour limit established in agency policy, the official said.

About seven of every 10 encounters in February resulted in expulsion under pandemic powers, limiting need for detention space. Mexican and Central American adults and families were sent back to Mexico. Mexican authorities have resisted taking back Central American families from Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings, prompting U.S. authorities to fly them to El Paso, Texas, and San Diego to be expelled.

Others picked up at the border may be released in the United States with notices to appear in immigration court.

The Biden administration is also stepping up efforts to have children apply for asylum from their homes in Central America instead of making the dangerous journey to the U.S. border.

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