Scott Farner
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Comments by "Scott Farner" (@scottfarner5100) on "JUST IN: Democrats And Republicans Grill Alejandro Mayorkas In House Homeland Security Hearing" video.
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@beckyhoyt4244 "What is Title 42 and what does it mean for immigration at the southern border?"
"Title 42 was created to address public health and social welfare and grants the government the ability to take emergency action in numerous ways, including to “stop the introduction of communicable diseases.” While the code has been in place for decades, it was used widely beginning in March 2020 by the administration of then-President Donald Trump in order to regulate border crossings under the premise of increased COVID-19 precautions.
The Trump administration used Title 42 to “essentially to override immigration law that allowed people to ask for asylum after entering illegally and said we could send them back” across the border, arguing that taking migrants into custody in federal facilities would create more of a public health risk, Theresa Cardinal Brown with the Bipartisan Policy Center told the PBS NewsHour’s Nicole Ellis in a conversation.
When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) invoked Title 42 at the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020, it gave border patrol agents the authority to expel migrants to their home country or the country they were last in, which was often Mexico.
Since 2020, there have been more than 2 million expulsions of migrants by U. S. Customs and Border Protection at the southern border using Title 42. This is due, in part, to recidivism: people trying to cross the border illegally, getting caught and sent back before trying again. Cardinal Brown says recidivism rates are higher than we’ve seen in “many, many decades. And we do believe that Title 42 was one of the reasons why we saw people trying multiple times, [which] increased the numbers.”
Bypassing the asylum process and sending migrants back to Mexico without due process immediately after their arrival to the U.S. didn’t deter them from attempting to cross or re-cross the U.S.-Mexico border in many cases, in part because “it pushed people back out of the country without any consequence to future immigration applications.”
Many people arriving at the southern border are “hoping for help and protection. Legally, they may not qualify for asylum, but that level of desperation is something that we can’t simply rely on punitive and deterrent measures to reduce,” she added.
The sheer numbers of people crossing the southern border have also affected how border officials do their jobs and prompted advocates and local communities to highlight insufficient resources there.
Border officials want to see “a policy from Washington that they believe will really address the work that they have been challenged to do, which is essentially taking people who are seeking asylum and having to care for them, take them in, deal with humanitarian issues and families and kids in facilities that are not structured for that,” Cardinal Brown said.
Local officials and advocates on the ground have done their best to manage the flow of people, but are ultimately “hoping the federal government will kind of reimburse them some of those moneys and say, hey, this is a federal problem, but these localities have had to deal with it and the federal government needs to come in and help us manage this,” Cardinal Brown said.
The Biden administration’s initial attempts to end the use of Title 42 at the border in 2022 stalled after a group of states sued, taking the case to the Supreme Court. The high court agreed to hear the case, but is requiring the government to keep Title 42 in place in the meantime.
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@beckyhoyt4244 El Paso tIMES
What is Title 42, when does it end, how does it impact US-Mexico border? What to know
Since March 2020, the U.S. has used its authority under the Title 42 public health law to rapidly expel migrants and, in some cases, suspend the right to seek asylum under U.S. law and international treaty.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under the Trump administration invoked Title 42 shortly after the coronavirus outbreak. Its purpose was to prohibit border control agencies from holding migrants in "congregant settings," like holding stations, where COVID-19 could spread rapidly. In effect, though, Title 42 gave the government the power to rapidly expel any migrant, without giving them an opportunity to make a case for staying in the country legally, including to seek asylum.
There have been multiple legal challenges to the policy.
On Dec. 19, the Supreme Court blocked a plan by the Biden administration to lift Title 42 restrictions on Dec. 21, as ordered by a lower court. On Dec. 27, the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments in February on whether 19 Republican-led states, including Texas, can challenge a lower-court ruling that ordered the Biden administration to lift Title 42. But the Supreme Court canceled the case in February after the Biden administration said it would end the nation's COVID-19 emergency order, effectively ending the Title 42 expulsions authority and rendering the arguments moot.
The CDC officially rescinded the policy a year ago, in April 2022, saying it was "no longer necessary" after "considering current public health conditions and an increased availability of tools to fight COVID-19."
What is Title 42?
The name refers to Title 42 of the U.S. Government Code established July 1, 1944. The law grants federal authorities the power to deny entry of people and products into the country to limit the spread of a communicable disease.
The Trump administration invoked the authority in March 2020 at the outset of the pandemic, and the Biden administration has continued to use Title 42 expulsions as a method of border control.
"Title 42 is not an immigration authority, and the order has been used to supersede federal law at the border ‒ which is under Title 8 of the U.S. Code ‒ and abrogate legal rights that have been guaranteed to arriving migrants for decades," according to an explainer published by the nonpartisan National Immigration Forum.
How is the Title 42 border policy used?
The Border Patrol has applied Title 42 differently in different border regions, depending on the resources available and the demographics of migrant groups. Enforcement of the order also varied under the Trump and Biden administrations.
Under the policy, migrants who cross between ports of entry can be picked up by Border Patrol, processed and expelled ‒ sometimes within hours. Title 42 has been applied both to those migrants who seek to evade border agents as well as those who turn themselves in to the Border Patrol to seek asylum.
The Border Patrol's ability to expel unauthorized migrants under Title 42 has been limited by which migrants Mexico is willing to accept, and how many, at different points along the border. The rate of Title 42 expulsions also can be influenced by the demographic makeup of who is crossing where.
Migrants from Mexico, Central American nations, Cuba and Venezuela can be expelled to Mexico under an agreement between the U.S. and Mexico. Others, including Haitians, have been expelled to their countries of origin unless they have legal documents to reside in Mexico, in which case they can be sent back to Mexico.
Border agencies expelled unaccompanied migrant children for a time under the order during the Trump administration, but the Biden administration stopped the practice.
In El Paso, the expulsions have taken the form of the Border Patrol walking migrants to the top of an international bridge and instructing them to walk south into Juárez. In some cases, the Border Patrol's El Paso Sector transfers migrants for expulsion at border crossings in other parts of Texas and in Arizona.
How many migrants have been expelled?
Since the start of the Title 42 policy, the Border Patrol has expelled migrants nearly 2.8 million times, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Title 42 allows for quick returns without repercussion, and that has encouraged some migrants to try again and again. Multiple crossings by migrants surged after the order went into effect.
In El Paso, the Border Patrol has leaned heavily on Title 42, where 63% of Border Patrol encounters have resulted in a Title 42 expulsion over the life of the policy, according to CBP. Between January and March, between two-thirds and 73% of encounters each month have resulted in expulsion.
Mexico permits Title 42 expulsions at some, but not all, of its border crossings.
Across the Southwest border, the use of Title 42 expulsions is much lower. From January to March, between one-third and 36% of encounters resulted in expulsion.
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