Border Crossing before and after Title 42
How did the expiration of Title 42 impact the number of people crossing El Paso's international bridges?
On May 11, 2023, the health emergency declared during the pandemic, along with Title 42, officially expired. Title 42 had allowed border agents to expel migrants to Mexico, and the expiration of the provision had many in El Paso braced for a surge of migrants . Nearly five months have passed since the provision expired, and we wanted to see if and how border crossing has been impacted. We looked at the number of people crossing El Paso's three international bridges (Paso Del Norte, Stanton Lerdo, and Ysleta Zaragoza) on each day of 2023, which provides more than five months of data before and after Title 42 expired. In the chart below, you can see the trend of daily visitors for each bridge, as well as the date when Title 42 expired.
2023 International Bridge Crossings
The trend line clearly shows that the number of crossings has increased at the Ysleta Zaragoza bridge since Title 42 expired. The impact on the other two bridges is harder to make out, and it is possible that there was no significant impact in those locations. Another important consideration is that we cannot know for sure what caused the number of crossings at Zaragoza to increase, whether it was related to Title 42 or not. Many factors are likely involved, known and unknown, and it is impossible to know which played a role and how large.
Data & Methodology
Data on visitors to El Paso's international bridges is provided by Near, a private mobility data company that aggregates and anonymizes mobile app data. We imported this data for all available dates in 2023.