A judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in an extraordinary dissent to a motion related to the Biden administration’s rule limiting asylum, scorched the administration for what he called "collusion" with an immigration activist group to put the rule on ice.

Border Patrol agents arrested nearly twice as many illegal immigrants in August as in June, spelling disaster for the Biden administration that had touted declining border numbers as a policy success.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott has floated a plan he says will reduce the flow of fentanyl into the U.S.: reinstating the COVID-19 era public health policy known as Title 42.

Title 42, enacted by the Trump administration in March 2020 and lifted May 11, was used to curb the spread of COVID-19. It gave border officials the power to quickly expel people arriving at the southern border, essentially blocking their ability to apply for asylum. 

The number of illegal migrants in Border Patrol facilities has more than doubled roughly three months after Title 42, the Trump-era expulsion policy, ended, according to internal agency data obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday afternoon defended the Biden administration’s asylum rules that were put in place after Title 42 to deter illegal immigration across the Southwest border.

His reaction came after a federal judge in California on Tuesday ruled against the new pathways and gave the administration two weeks to revoke the new regulations.

Title 42's expiration has opened the floodgates for waves of illegal aliens surging the United States-Mexico border, with the outpour trickling to Democrat-led "sanctuary cities" already overrun by violent crime, homelessness, and open-air drug dealing.

For the last three years, a previously obscure emergency public health order allowed politicians to temporarily sidestep one of the most complicated issues in American politics — migration at the United States' southern border. Former President Donald Trump invoked Title 42 in the spring of 2020 as COVID-19 cases were spreading. And that meant that border agents could quickly process and expel migrants. But as COVID cases dipped, the rule remained in place, allowing officials to control the flow of migrants.

At 11:59 pm last Thursday, the policy expired.

The massive surge at the U.S.-Mexico border that was predicted to happen at midnight going into Friday never happened. While illegal crossings remained at an all-time high throughout the week, the expected crush of people at that exact time did not take place.

U.S. border patrol agents have seen a 50% drop in the number of migrants crossing the border since the pandemic-era immigration policy known as Title 42 expired at midnight on Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on CNN's "State of the Union" program on Sunday.

"Over the past two days, the United States Border Patrol has experienced a 50% drop in the number of encounters versus what we were experiencing earlier in the week before Title 42 ended at midnight on Thursday," Mayorkas said.