Mayorkas addresses challenges at US-Mexico border and promises consequences for smugglers.

The US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, has described the situation at the US-Mexico border as "extremely challenging" ahead of the end of asylum restrictions implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic. A surge of Venezuelan migrants through south Texas has occurred over the last two weeks, and Mayorkas noted that Mexico agreed this week to continue taking back Venezuelans who enter the US illegally after asylum restrictions end on 11 May, along with Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans. The US customs and border protection is raising the number of people admitted to the country at land crossings with Mexico to 1,000 a day from 740 using a mobile app called CBP One that was extended in January to asylum-seekers.