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A federal judge ruled Thursday that the U.S. government must stop using a Trump-era public health order to quickly expel migrants with children who are apprehended along the U.S.-Mexico border. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan gave the government two weeks to halt a practice that opponents say is unnecessary and improperly relies on the threat posed by Covid-19 to deprive people of their right to seek asylum in the United States. (9/16)

The Department of Homeland Security must improve its COVID-19 response at the U.S.-Mexico border to protect the safety of its workforce, migrants and local communities, a government watchdog has found. “Without stronger COVID-19 prevention measures in place, DHS is putting its workforce, support staff, communities, and migrants at greater risk of contracting the virus,” investigators in DHS’s inspector general office said in a report Wednesday. (Simon, 9/16)

Thousands of migrants were crowded under a bridge outside the border community of Del Rio on Thursday, part of a massive surge in migration across the Rio Grande this week that has overwhelmed the authorities and caused significant delays in processing the arrivals. ... The scene — of dense crowds sleeping on dirt or milling about in triple-digit heat amid conditions of deteriorating sanitation — drew condemnations from local officials. Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas ordered the state police and the National Guard to assist border agents in Del Rio, saying the federal response had not been enough to quell the surge in crossings. (Dobbins, Sullivan and Sandoval, 9/16)

Thousands of asylum seekers, mostly Haitians, have arrived in Del Rio in recent days, the latest in a surge of migration to the southern border that the Biden administration has struggled to handle, prompting the federal government to boost Border Patrol in the region and Gov. Greg Abbott to send in more state troopers and the Texas National Guard. Masses of migrants have huddled under an international bridge where Border Patrol set up a temporary holding site to protect them from the sun while officials work to take them into custody and process them, to be either expelled immediately or allowed to seek asylum. (Wermund and Trovall, 9/16)

Gov. Greg Abbott said on Thursday that he directed state troopers and the Texas National Guard “to shut down six points of entry along the southern border” at the request of U.S. Customs and Border Protection — then reversed himself shortly after, blaming the Biden administration for flip-flopping in its request for state help. But a CBP spokesperson said the federal government — which operates ports of entry at the U.S.-Mexico border — had no plans to shut down any ports of entry. (Garcia and McCullough, 9/16)