Border crossings dip, but officials still preparing for big surge

Pandemic-era limits on asylum known as Title 42 have been rarely discussed among many of tens of thousands of migrants massed on Mexico’s border with the United States.

Their eyes were — and are — fixed instead on a new U.S. government mobile app that grants 1,000 people daily an appointment to cross the border and seek asylum while living in the U.S. With demand far outstripping available slots, the app has been an exercise in frustration for many — and a test of the Biden administration’s strategy of coupling new legal paths to entry with severe consequences for those who don’t.

“You start to give up hope but it’s the only way,” said Teresa Muñoz, 48, who abandoned her home in the Mexican state of Michoacan after a gang killed her husband and beat her. She has been…