Now let's turn to Title 42. It's the pandemic border restriction President Trump implemented two years ago to block most migration from Mexico. The Biden administration tried to lift it, but a federal judge recently ordered the policy to stay in place. Even so, the border is not totally closed. Asylum-seekers are still crossing, and at least one shelter for them in Arizona is seeing record numbers. NPR's Kirk Siegler reports.

KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: Ever since he was a boy in the border city of Nogales, Santa Cruz County sheriff David Hathaway says people have been crossing over, looking for a better life. Only recently has this become red meat for national politicians.

DAVID HATHAWAY: You know, over the past multiple years, caravan staging in Mexico, and they're heading this way, and they're going to rush across the border, and it's going to be a mass invasion. It's never materialized the way they describe it.

SIEGLER: Today in this high desert, it's quiet.

HATHAWAY: There you go. That's Mexico right there.

SIEGLER: Hathaway is a former DEA agent in Nogales and in South America. But he dresses more like the old West - cowboy hat, suspenders, keychain dangling off his belt. Down this dirt road, he points to a section of newer border fence, with its coils of razor wire dangling off the American side. Construction stopped when Donald Trump left office.

HATHAWAY: So then it kind of just went back to this vehicle barrier-type fencing that anybody can just walk through. You could just walk right under that.

SIEGLER: And people are. Under Title 42, most Mexicans and Central Americans who are caught are sent back immediately. But there are exceptions.

Seventy miles to the north, the Casa Alitas shelter in Tucson is seeing a record number of asylum-seekers, even a few days after a federal judge kept the closures at southern ports of entry in place.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: And the reason we're registering you is so that we can take you to the airport or to the bus station and help you with...

SIEGLER: Three hundred and seventy five people are arriving today. They look exhausted. They're drinking water and carrying their belongings in plastic bags. The shelter's director, Teresa Cavendish, says it's probably the first time they've felt safe in ages.

TERESA CAVENDISH: Something caused them to leave their homes. Whatever that something was, was traumatic and dangerous to them. And then they've spent time on the U.S.-Mexico border, a very unsafe space to be in.

SIEGLER: There's a lot of global instability and violence, especially since the pandemic. And Cavendish is preparing this shelter to handle up to a thousand people a day.

CAVENDISH: We are continuing to move forward. This pause in Title 42, we believe, is just that, a pause.

SIEGLER: Most of the people arriving here now are from countries like Cuba, Venezuela and Colombia, where immigration authorities cannot easily return them to their home countries or to Mexico.

SIEGLER: Speaking through an interpreter, Wilmar Romero (ph) says he had to leave Colombia because an armed gang made a threat to his family. They flew to Mexico City. Then it was a three-day bus ride to Mexicali. Then they crossed at a known gap in the border fence near Yuma, Ariz.

SIEGLER: Romero's story is typical, according to aid workers. Once he crossed, he waited to surrender at a place the Border Patrol tends to pick migrants up. Eventually, he was brought to this shelter. A lot of the humanitarian support here is coming from federal funding, much of which is set to run out at the end of next month. Regina Romero is the mayor of Tucson.

REGINA ROMERO: I'm concerned that Congress will not allocate funding for a mess in terms of a broken immigration system that they refuse to fix.

SIEGLER: Romero says it's ironic that Republicans sued to keep a public health order in place.

R ROMERO: For example, Attorney General Brnovich here of Arizona was fighting cities like Tucson when we were instituting public health measures to protect our communities from COVID-19.

SIEGLER: The Republican AG declined interview requests, but in a statement called the judge's ruling keeping Title 42 in place a win. Back in Nogales, Santa Cruz County sheriff David Hathaway says Title 42 is only adding to the backlog of asylum cases in U.S. courts.

HATHAWAY: If someone at the cabinet level in the Biden administration heard this, that's what I would say. Get the deciding officials that make these decisions right at the border. Have a line where they immediately decide the cases.

SIEGLER: The Biden administration has just launched a small program to start doing that, but it may not survive a court challenge. Kirk Siegler, NPR News, Nogales.

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