President Biden has reportedly considered a plan to remove a Trump-era public health order that allowed border officials to quickly turn away migrant families looking for entry to the United States.
Trump’s order, Title 42, was made to forbid refuge-seekers who were possibly carrying COVID-19 from coming to the country and spreading the disease. Over thousands of migrants were rejected at the border and sent away to Mexico under the policy.
As COVID-19 cases have decreased nationwide and vaccine distribution aided to the decreasing numbers of deaths, hospitalizations, and infections, immigration activists have called on the Biden administration to end Title 42.
On Monday, Axios reported that Biden was briefed on a plan for ending family removals by the end of July, either through executive action or by letting a court shut down the policy. The American Civil Liberties Union has challenged the order in a lawsuit that claims the Trump administration usurped Congress to “bypass the entire immigration statutory scheme” by using public health law to “set aside the immigration laws.”
According to the report, Biden’s administration has been discussing with the ACLU, which has put a temporary hold on its lawsuit. Top administration officials are reportedly pleading with Biden to be proactive and end Title 42 before the ACLU resumes its lawsuit and the Biden administration is forced to defend Trump’s policy in court. There seems to be worry that a court battle over the policy “could result in sensitive information being released through the litigation process” that “could be seen as contradictory to Biden’s commitment to asylum,” Stef W. Kight reported.
A White House official who spoke to Axios said ending Title 42 would be “a public health decision that will be made ultimately on those grounds.” The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will conclusively make a decision on the policy, which Biden will then act on.
In the past four months, migrant adults have been rejected entry to the United States at least 350,000 times under Title 42. Even so, Axios reported that since March, the policy has been applied to fewer than half of family encounters. This is because of limited space in Mexican shelters to house migrants turned away from the U.S. Also, some Mexican states are declining to take in families with young children.
In May, the Biden administration also made it easier for refuge-seekers to claim a humanitarian immunity to the Title 42 policy.
White House officials admitted there is a chance ending Title 42 for families could cause a increase of migrant families coming to the U.S.-Mexico border.
In the first months of Biden’s administration, the president looked to retract quite a few of his predecessor’s restrictive immigration policies, leading to the largest wave of migrants trying to enter the U.S. in two decades. President Biden appointed Vice President Kamala Harris to manage the administration’s response to the crisis, but her handling of the situation — and her bizarre refusal to visit the southern border — has been very criticized.
In May, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 112,302 border encounters under its Title 42 authority, the highest number of encounters reported since the order was established in March 2020.