WASHINGTON -- Dire predictions of border chaos when Title 42 expired have not come to pass, and President Joe Biden scoffed at the idea of sharing credit with Gov. Greg Abbott's surge of National Guard troops.
"Give me a break," he said in the Oval Office in a brief exchange with The Dallas Morning News.
Biden did express satisfaction that the border has remained far more orderly than expected as the policy ended.
"It's looking much better," he said.
The comments came at the start of a closed-door meeting Tuesday afternoon with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other congressional leaders, aimed at averting an unprecedented default on the national debt.
Title 42 expired at midnight Thursday.
The Biden administration and its critics, including Abbott and Republicans in Congress, warned that migrants and the smuggling cartels would take the expiration as an invitation of sorts.
The Department of Homeland Security projected a surge up to 13,000 migrants per day at the border, well above the 10,000 per day early last week.
Instead, DHS officials reported a significant drop in migrant border crossings.
"We have been planning for months and months -- over a year and a half," Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Sunday on CNN.
But on each of the three days after Title 42 expired, encounters stayed below 5,000 per day, Blas Nuñez-Neto, the DHS assistant secretary for border and immigration policy, told reporters Monday.
"It's still too early to draw firm conclusions," he said. "We are mindful that smugglers will continue to look for ways to take advantage of the change in border policies."
Still, a growing number of congressional Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz and a number of House members, have called for impeaching Mayorkas. They say he has bungled management of the border.
Title 42, a public health emergency power invoked by the Trump administration early in the COVID-19 pandemic, allowed for immediate expulsion of migrants regardless of any asylum claim.
Three days before the expiration, Abbott deployed another 450 National Guard troops to the border to address what he called a "Biden-made crisis."
"President Biden is laying down a welcome mat to people across the entire world, saying that the United States border is wide open," the governor said as he announced the deployment of the new Texas Tactical Border Force.
He accused Biden not only of weak border security policies but of outright "collaboration" with smuggling cartels. Texas is being "undermined" and "overrun by our own federal government," he said.
The White House made its disapproval clear.
Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre chastised Abbott for deploying the National Guard without so much as a heads-up to federal authorities.
Instead, she said -- referring to busloads of migrants Texas began delivering over a year ago to the U.S. Capitol and vice president's official residence to draw attention to complaints -- Abbott's "first call" on border policies is usually to Fox News.
"This is just about political theater for him," she said.
Days before Abbott announced the deployment, Biden ordered an additional 1,500 federal troops to the border to free up Border Patrol agents ahead an expected surge that has yet to materialize.
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