Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw criticized Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra for backing some COVID-19 measures while also supporting the end of the Title 42 pandemic policy for turning away migrants at the southern border.
Crenshaw slammed Becerra for embracing federal safety measures such as mask mandates on planes and in child care centers as key to mitigating COVID-19 risk while also supporting the goal of lifting Title 42. It was implemented in March 2020 and mandated that U.S. border officials turn away migrants immediately, with the aim of preventing the spread of the coronavirus.
“You got to be consistent. You either believe that Title 42 is still a necessary thing to do because of COVID or you don’t,” Crenshaw said. “There’s clearly no consistency here, and that’s the problem.”
Becerra said Title 42 has no bearing on measures such as mask mandates or the eviction moratorium. He said the federal government has remained consistent in its safety guidelines during the pandemic in that all decisions are made based on scientific research.
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“The CDC has been using the facts and the science to drive what it does,” Becerra said. “Cruise ships are different from schools, which are different from the border. And it’s not a cookie-cutter approach, the use of our healthcare authorities. Title 42 is not the same as the emergency declaration.”
Hospitalizations of people with COVID-19 are at their lowest since the start of the pandemic, and deaths continue to decline. Still, Becerra said, COVID-19 is still circulating in the United States. Cases have ticked up modestly over the past month, reaching a seven-day average number of confirmed cases of about 47,000.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s announcement earlier this month that the administration would lift the order on May 23 sent Republicans and some centrist Democrats into a panic over the expected flood of migrants coming in to seek asylum as a result. For instance, Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who opposed the Trump administration’s implementation of Title 42, came out strongly against the Biden administration’s plan to rescind it “without a detailed plan.”
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President Joe Biden, whose renewed mask mandate for mass transit was overturned by a federal judge last week, faced another loss Monday when a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana issued a temporary restraining order on the administration’s plan to end Title 42, calling on the Department of Justice and states to work out the details in continuing the policy.
