US judge upholds Title 42, which restricts asylum claims

Afp, Reuters and Sputnik

Newspaper La Jornada
Saturday May 21, 2022, p. 6

Washington. A federal judge in Louisiana has blocked the Joe Biden administration from ending a restriction imposed by the administration of former President Donald Trump, known as Title 42, which denies migrants the ability to apply for asylum at the US-Mexico border. with the argument of preventing the spread of covid-19 and whose validity ended on the 23rd of this month.

The Biden government announced that it will challenge the ruling that allows maintaining the policy of immediately expelling migrants seeking asylum in its territory. The administration disagrees with the court’s decision and the Justice Department announced that it will appealKarine Jean-Pierre, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement.

The national order issued by District Judge Robert Summerhays means the restrictions will remain in place at the border while litigation progresses.

The pandemic restrictions, known as Title 42, were put into place in March 2020. Health authorities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said at the time that they were necessary to stop the spread of the coronavirus. . Since then, more than a million migrants detained at the border have been quickly expelled to Mexico or other countries, often within hours of being captured.

Biden kept Title 42 despite concerns from medical experts, the United Nations and members of his own party, who said the expulsions endangered vulnerable migrants and were not really helpful, according to science, to curb infections.

In April, the CDC declared that Title 42 is no longer necessary to combat covid-19 thanks to vaccines and other measures, indicating to border authorities that the measure should be lifted on May 23. But a coalition of two dozen states led by Arizona, Louisiana and Missouri, all with Republican attorneys general, sued to prevent the administration from ending the policy. Summerhays, a Trump appointee, asserted that a national injunction is necessary given the ability of migrants crossing the border to move freely from state to state.

The US Customs and Border Protection Office reported earlier this week that it made 234,088 arrests of undocumented immigrants on the southern border in April, which put the Biden administration on the trend of reaching a second consecutive annual record for the number of migrants. who crossed the border.

About 1.3 million undocumented migrants have been apprehended this fiscal year, according to data from Customs and Border Protection. Last fiscal year, 1.7 million migrants were detained, and the result has been widely blamed on Biden’s lax immigration policy.