A new wave of migrants is building up on the US-Mexico border in anticipation of the revoking of Title 42, a Trump administration COVID initiative which placed restrictions on asylum seekers.

Migrants have already converged on the border city of El Paso in recent days, overwhelming shelters and forcing some people to sleep on the streets.

El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser has declared a state of emergency as winter temperatures take hold.

“I really believe that today our asylum seekers are not safe as we have hundreds and hundreds on the streets,” Mayor Leeser said at a recent press conference.

“That’s not the way we want to treat people. We want to make sure that people are treated with dignity and being out in 20, 25-degree weather is not want we want to see,” he said.

Mayor Leeser said El Paso is expecting to see an “incredible” increase in migrants shortly with the end of Title 42.

The Trump-era immigration policy, which placed restrictions on asylum seekers, is set to end after a federal judge struck down the rule in November.

The judge gave the Biden administration five weeks to wind down its use of the rule.

By declaring a state of emergency, El Paso can access additional resources to direct people off the streets and into shelters.

It will also help transport migrants, as they travel to their final destinations.

Typically, migrants leave the southern border town within 24 to 48 hours of arriving, Mayor Leeser said.

But transport is expected to become more difficult to arrange as the holidays approach, causing some migrants to stay longer than usual, he said.

In October, New York City declared a state of emergency in response to an unprecedented influx of asylum seekers into the city, mostly from the southern border of the US.

Mayor Eric Adams issued an executive order to formally direct all relevant agencies in the city to coordinate their efforts to respond to the asylum seeker humanitarian crisis and to construct temporary humanitarian relief centres.

Mayor Adams also called for emergency federal and state funding to handle the continued influx of asylum seekers, including legislation allowing asylum seekers to work, a decompression strategy at the border, a coordinated effort to move asylum seekers to other cities, emergency financial relief and immigration reform.

The shelter system in New York City is now operating at near 100-per cent capacity accommodating more than 61,000 people, and the city would have more than 100,000 asylum seekers next year if current trend continues, according to Adams.

“That’s far more than the system was ever designed to handle. This is unsustainable. The city is going to run out of funding for other priorities,” Mayor Adams said.

The crisis has been fuelled in part by the Republican governors of Texas, Arizona and Florida who have been sending asylum seekers on buses to Democratic-run states – without prior warning or coordination – to draw attention to the rising number of migrants crossing into the United States through its border with Mexico.

The Republican governors blame President Biden’s immigration policies for the rise in arrivals at the border and say their campaign is necessary in order to share the burden of hosting the asylum seekers.