It's Time to End Title 42
Efforts to end the cruel expulsions caused by Title 42 continue as hopes crumble that President Biden will finally lift the order in light of a new restraining order and a proposed extension in Congress.
In late March, the Biden Administration announced that it planned to lift the Title 42 expulsion policy in late May. This policy has restricted asylum seekers' entry to the United States since early 2020 and has been widely criticized for just as long. Shortly after the announcement, however, the Biden Administration voiced hesitation to follow through with its promise, citing concerns about an influx of people seeking entry at the border once the order is lifted. But these concerns fall flat in the face of ample evidence that, with enough political incentive, the government is, in fact, equipped to timely process individuals at the border.
Just this week, there are reports at the border that Customs and Border Patrol is "processing up to a thousand Ukrainians per day, at a port of entry where border officials claimed they did not have capacity to even process 30 other asylum seekers per day in the past few years." Meanwhile, Title 42 continues to exist as a mechanism for these same officials to deny BIPOC asylum seekers access to protection.
"RMIAN applauds the Biden Administration for expeditiously processing Ukrainian asylum seekers' cases, allowing them to enter the country and reunite with loved ones. However, it should similarly take swift action to offer the same opportunity to all persons seeking asylum who are fleeing violence and persecution. It sends a disturbing message that our government views certain lives as being more deserving of safety and stability than others, reinforcing racial bias and perpetuating systemic discrimination against Black, Brown, and indigenous communities." Laura Lunn, Detention Program Managing Attorney.
During his campaign, President Biden promised to roll back the harmful immigration policies implemented during the Trump Administration, but 1.7 million expulsions have occurred since the inception of Title 42, 1.2 million of them during the Biden Administration.
The Administration's continued consideration of this policy threatens to exacerbate already horrendous conditions at the border. It is further complicated by a recent decision out of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana granting a restraining order to keep Title 42 in place. In this case, the states of Missouri, Louisiana, and Arizona are fighting to keep Title 42 in place and thereby restrict any access to asylum in the United States – a longtime goal of many conservatives. Concerningly, it is not just conservative voices calling for a continuation of Title 42: there is currently a bill before Congress that contemplates extending Title 42 based on the purported health emergency, and many Democratic elected officials are considering support of this bill, including Senator Michael Bennet and Senator John Hickenlooper, despite the fact that application of such a bill would likely result in an indefinite ban on entry at the border.
Title 42 is an order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) based on federal public health law. It allows the United States to expel someone from the country, sometimes to a designated third country different from their country of citizenship, without allowing them the opportunity to first seek protection in the United States.
Since its introduction in March of 2020, the government has used Title 42 to push back thousands of asylum seekers and deny them their legal right to seek protection, regardless of their claim or any other consideration like severe illness or the dangers awaiting them in refugee camps along the border. Indeed, Al Otro Lado, Haitian Bridge Alliance, and Human Rights First just released a new report that documents the mounting dangers befalling asylum seekers in Tijuana who are being blocked from entering the United States. In many instances, individuals who do attempt to cross the border are being apprehended and detained for several days, if not weeks, before the government expels them back to the very same dangers in Tijuana that they are trying to escape in the first place, including kidnapping, rape, torture, and other violent attacks. Despite evidence that over 10,000 people have experienced such horrors since the inception of Title 42, politicians continue to label this a "necessary" policy.
Highlighting the hypocrisy of these expulsions is the fact that people can easily cross the U.S.-Mexico border to work, enter as tourists, or even go shopping. Still, our government is saying that asylum seekers need to stay out, reinforcing the false rhetoric that migrants are disease-ridden, even though many people seeking asylum are vaccinated against COVID-19. This, in a country where people advocate against vaccinations, masks, and other safety protocols, and where the chief medical adviser to President Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has declared that we are in fact "out of the pandemic phase."
For months, public health experts have demanded an end to the order, noting the "long, regrettable history of stoking fears of disease to galvanize support for anti-immigration policies," highlighting the "terrible toll on the lives and well-being of asylum seekers," and calling for the United States to "adopt measures that are based on sound science and public health practice."
When the Biden Administration first announced its intent to lift Title 42, the CDC had just announced that the policy was no longer necessary. This announcement also followed several high-profile court cases in which federal courts issued conflicting rulings holding both that a prior exception to the policy carved out for unaccompanied children was unlawful and also that the United States could also not expel people to places where they would likely be persecuted or tortured.
Despite these developments, the continued outcry that Title 42 is "necessary" and the new restraining order keeping Title 42 in place, for now, means that advocates are redoubling efforts to demonstrate the dangers associated with such a decision.
Title 42 has never been necessary to safeguard public health and has instead served as a racist tool to control who is and is not allowed to exercise their legal rights at the border, as evidenced by the notably inconsistent application of the policy across nationalities. People from Mexico and Central America are disproportionately turned away under the auspices of this policy. Meanwhile, people from other countries are more often exempted from this policy and allowed to seek protection under the normal mechanisms of asylum, such as the case of Ukrainian asylum seekers.
"Since Title 42 came into play, there has been a drastic change to the population that RMIAN is serving in Colorado. We know that conditions have not changed in Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Still, we are seeing so few individuals from this region being afforded the opportunity to seek asylum. At the same time, other populations are being allowed to present their cases to immigration judges, oftentimes without even the need to first have a credible fear interview. We also know that the government is using Title 42 to expel individuals from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador directly to Mexico rather than having to arrange flights to Central America, and it's clear that this carve-out is being used selectively and intentionally to control who is afforded the opportunity to seek asylum." Jenn Nelson, Legal Orientation Program Supervisory Attorney
For too long, Title 42 has been weaponized to gatekeep admission to the United States. RMIAN calls on public officials to demand an end to Title 42 now. We cannot allow this policy to remain in effect, nor can we allow for it ever to be used again as a means to deny individuals the right to seek asylum.