BROWNSVILLE, Texas (ValleyCentral) — In an interview with NewsNation, Brownsville Mayor Trey Mendez talked about the city’s role in immigration and the end of Title 42.

NewsNation: You’ve always had immigration in this community. It’s always been a thing. So you’ve been able to kind of maintain it, I would assume, but over the last two years, things have ramped up a little over the last week, they’ve ramped up a lot to tell me do you feel like you have the resources?

“It’s something [the system] that can at this time handle about 1,000 people a day in the processing. One thing that’s been very important for us has been having communication with our federal partners. That’s Customs and Border Protection, DHS, we’ve had very coordinated drop-offs, we schedule our drop-offs and we have personnel that knows what they’re doing when it comes to processing.”

“Personally, I also think that the ability to use Title 8 is also going to be helpful because for those individuals that are coming illegally, Customs Border Protection, we’ll be able to deport those individuals immediately and there’s stricter penalties for them not to be able to come for another five years. I think that those will act as deterrence,” said Mendez.

NewsNation: Title 8 has been in place, and it’s in place. So how would that be determined?

“That hasn’t actually been the primary mechanism that’s being used to send people back, whether that’s Mexico, Central America, or South America. So that hasn’t really been the primary law that’s being used. We were seeing Title 42 being used as a primary deterrent, and that is subjective. I don’t think there’s a need for Title 42 anymore, because the public health emergency has been over for quite some time,” Mendez added.