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“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday that it is ending a policy that limited asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The government said it was already making plans to erect tents and take other steps to prepare for an expected influx of migrants… The policy, known as the Title 42 authority, is named for a 1944 public health law to prevent communicable disease.” AP News
The right is critical of the decision to end Title 42, arguing that it will exacerbate the crisis at the border.
“The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has started preparing for scenarios for a cataclysmic 18,000 apprehensions a day, and DHS deputy secretary John Tien went so far as to ask employees to join a ‘DHS Volunteer Force.’ Jeh Johnson, Obama’s DHS secretary, has said that anything over 1,000 daily encounters ‘overwhelms the system’ and anything over 4,000 is a ‘crisis.’ DHS is currently reporting an average of 7,100 daily encounters, up from 5,900 in February…
“Detention facilities have already been getting overwhelmed, leading to mass releases. In January, 55,000 migrants were released into the United States. One can only imagine what the border will look like with the end of Title 42.”
The Editors, National Review
“DHS is set to implement a new rule substantially changing the role of asylum officers of the U.S. Citizens and Immigration Service (USCIS). Instead of simply determining credible fear which allows a claimant to appear before a judge, under the new rule asylum officers will now have the same authority as a judge… By removing immigration judges, the Administration is putting complete authority in the hands of a single department, DHS, with no review by the Department of Justice. Really bad idea…
“Rep. [Henry Cuellar (D-TX) recently] said that only 14 percent of individuals who were found by USCIS to have a credible fear are ultimately granted asylum by an immigration judge. In other words, for every 100 applicants approved by USCIS, only 14 are found legitimate by an immigration judge…
“By comparing the extremely low percentage of final approvals by immigration judges to the extremely high percentage of approvals by asylum officers, the issue becomes crystal clear — there must be judicial review. DHS’ proposed new rule will not be a positive border security game changer. It will only encourage more illegal immigration.”
Brandon Judd, Fox News
“The new Biden system grants ‘asylum officers’ the power to grant asylum to migrants but not the power to deny their asylum claims. If an asylum officer does not grant a migrant asylum, then that migrant’s case just goes straight into the same backlog where all the other asylum cases now go. The new policy is just a one-way ratchet that can only increase grants of asylum…
“Without the ability to turn away any migrants using Title 42, the Biden administration will choose to take almost all of them into the country, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement will not have the capacity to detain them. So, almost all of them will be released into the country, either with a promise to appear in an immigration court on a certain date or to check in with a local ICE office when they reach their final destination. Because it is Biden’s policy not to try and find any of these migrants unless they commit a violent crime, almost all of them will be allowed to stay in the United States forever…
“Already more than 70% of voters believe the crisis on the southern border is a problem ‘that needs to be addressed immediately.’ Asked specifically if ‘people who cross the border with Mexico illegally should be turned back to Mexico’ (as was President Trump’s policy) or ‘released into the US with a court date’ (which is Biden's policy), 71% of voters chose the Trump policy.”
Editorial Board, Washington Examiner
The left supports the decision to end Title 42, arguing that it was not necessary to prevent the spread of Covid and resulted in the expulsion of migrants lawfully seeking asylum.
The left supports the decision to end Title 42, arguing that it was not necessary to prevent the spread of Covid and resulted in the expulsion of migrants lawfully seeking asylum.
“In recent weeks, the U.S. government began allowing Ukrainians and Russians fleeing the war to request asylum on a case-by-case basis at the U.S.-Mexico border. Julia Neusner, an attorney with the advocacy and research organization Human Rights First, tweeted on March 23 that she witnessed 26 Ukrainian asylum seekers being granted entry into the U.S. while a Mexican family waiting with them was turned away…
“The administration has also flown more than 25,000 people to Haiti without giving them the opportunity to ask for asylum, and it has sent expulsion flights to Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador, and, recently, Colombia, among other countries…
“‘Ukrainians and Russians absolutely should have the right to seek asylum at the border. The government is doing the right thing,’ Neusner said. ‘They’re upholding U.S. and international refugee law. The problem is they’re not extending the same humanity to everybody else who’s seeking protection.’”
Andrea González-Ramírez, The Cut
“Title 42 was always a border control measure masquerading as public health policy. Covid-19 was already rampant in the US by the time the policy went into effect, and the law was never applied to air travelers or US citizens crossing the border. It was only used as a pretext for keeping out migrants who were mostly brown, Black and economically vulnerable…
“An article in last month's New England Journal of Medicine found that there ‘is no public health evidence that singling out asylum seekers or other migrants ...is effective in stemming the spread of Covid-19.’… Now, with Covid-19 restrictions being lifted across country, there's even less justification for continuing to keep Title 42 as US policy…
“True, there is a backlog of migrants desperate to enter the US, and a great number of them will likely cross the border once Title 42 is rescinded. But that doesn't mean we should fear or demonize them. The Biden administration is already working on contingency plans to prepare for the anticipated increase in border arrivals… The US has a legal obligation to help people fleeing danger and persecution.”Raul A. Reyes, CNN
“[Title 42] didn’t work substantively or politically. Its rationale — that it’s needed for public health purposes — has been widely denounced by public-health experts as baseless. As policy for managing the border — which isn’t even supposed to be its rationale anyway — its success has been highly questionable. As the American Immigration Council has demonstrated, Title 42 has actually led to an explosion in repeat efforts by expelled migrants to cross the border, because under the rule, there is little penalty for trying. That has inflated raw numbers of encounters at the border…
“Nor has this even worked politically for Biden. Republicans attacked Biden for months for having ‘open borders’ even though huge numbers of migrants were being expelled without due process. And Biden’s approval ratings on immigration are some of his lowest, regularly running in the mid-30s, down from the 50s when he first took office… It’s time to try something else.”
Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman, Washington Post
A libertarian's take
“While it's a good thing that Biden may finally end the expulsions, it's reprehensible that the White House continues to hide behind the skirts of the CDC, perhaps hoping to convey the impression that they're just ‘following the science.’ In reality, this was a White House-driven and politics-driven policy from first to last…
“Even if government agencies deserve special deference when they enact policy based on specialized scientific expertise, such disinterested expertise has been notable primarily by its absence, when it comes to CDC's role in Covid pandemic policy. Both Trump and Biden have used the agency's veneer of scientific expertise as a cover for dubious policies actually enacted for other reasons. Courts and others should take note.”
Ilya Somin, Volokh Conspiracy
