The Biden administration will end a Trump administration policy that had allowed U.S. border officials to turn away immediately any noncitizen who illegally came across the land borders amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The policy, known as Title 42, will end May 23, the administration announced Friday. Its ending has been long sought by immigrant advocates allied with the White House but raises the prospect of further chaos at the border before the midterm elections.
“Title 42 is not an immigration authority, but rather a public health authority used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protect against the spread of communicable disease,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. “Title 42 remains in place until May 23 and, until then, DHS will continue to expel single adults and families encountered at the Southwest border.”
Under Title 42 of public health law, the CDC had recommended in March 2020 that people be denied admission to prevent the coronavirus from spreading at border facilities. The temporary policy was good for 60 days but has been renewed over the past two years, even as Democrats pushed President Joe Biden to end it because it denied migrants the ability to seek asylum. In that time, border officials have turned migrants away more than 1.6 million times.
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Starting on May 23, illegal immigrants taken into custody by the Border Patrol will be put into removal proceedings. If they are unable to establish a legal basis to remain in the United States, such as seeking asylum, they will be removed, a senior administration official said in a call with reporters Friday.
“We are grateful that this long and shameful chapter in our nation’s history is coming to end,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, wrote in posts on Twitter. “The decision is an overdue recognition that all people fleeing violence and persecution have the right to seek protection.”
Under the Trump administration, virtually all illegal immigrants were turned back to Mexico or another country. The Biden administration stopped turning away children and many families, ultimately turning away roughly half of illegal immigrants and generally releasing the other half into the U.S. as they awaited court proceedings for their immigration claims.
The move further risks Democrats’ chances of holding the House and Senate come November. Polls from February and March revealed an average 58% of voters do not approve of Biden’s handling of immigration and border matters.
Since Biden took office in January 2021, the number of illegal immigrants encountered at the southern border has hit record highs, jumping from monthly averages of fewer than 50,000 encounters in a month over the past decade to staying between 150,000 and 215,000 every month since March 2021.
A further escalation and the potential for mass releases of illegal crossers into the interior of the U.S. would further damage Biden’s standing. U.S. officials have already warned that camps of migrants are building in Mexico, waiting for Title 42 to be lifted.
The DHS now has roughly seven weeks to prepare for the expected influx of noncitizens expected to seek asylum or illegally cross the border.
“We are coordinating across the whole of the government to ensure that we are prepared for any potential increase in border encounters that result as a result of the termination,” the same official said.
Mayorkas added that the department was working with the State, Health and Human Services, and Justice departments to move personnel to the border to deal with the anticipated increase in people coming across the border come late May, with the hope they will not be turned back to Mexico.
Jeremy Robbins, executive director of the American Immigration Council, called on the Biden administration to facilitate the asylum process at ports of entry to avoid people trying to come into the U.S. illegally.
“No person should feel as if their only way to access the asylum system is to cross the border between ports of entry,” Robbins said in a statement. “Rather than view asylum seekers with fear and suspicion, we should work on addressing the root causes of migration while creating a flexible humanitarian protection system that respects the lawful right to seek asylum and that can respond in times of global displacement.”
Republicans called the decision bad news, and one lawmaker said the DHS needs to brief Congress in detail.
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“President Biden and Democrats never met a COVID mandate they didn’t like—except for Title 42,” said House Oversight and Reform Committee ranking member James Comer, a Kentucky Republican. “President Biden continues pandemic mandates for Americans but is ending his use of Title 42 to turn away illegal immigrants at the border on public health grounds. This amounts to a COVID relief package for the cartels who will take advantage of a completely broken and overwhelmed system to profit from drug and human smuggling.”
