The Biden administration has partially ended its reliance on a Trump-era coronavirus directive used to expel thousands of migrant children and their families from the southern border before they could seek asylum.
Border officials will no longer deport unaccompanied non-citizen children covered by the so-called Title 42 policy, which has led to more than 1.6 million expulsions since its introduction in 2020, the CDC announced on Saturday.
The decision was reached “after considering current public health conditions and recent developments, that expulsion of unaccompanied noncitizen children is not warranted to protect the public health,” the agency said in a statement.
“There is no longer a serious danger of the introduction, transmission, and spread of COVID-19 into the United States as a result of entry of [unaccompanied non-citizen children],” it added in an accompanying brief about the policy change, noting “a suspension of the introduction of [unaccompanied non-citizen children] is not required in the interested of public health.”
The Biden administration had previously sought to exempt children from the policy, but a federal judge in Texas ruled earlier this month that the exception was invalid, splitting with other federal courts.
Courts have also challenged other aspects of the policy, with a federal appeals court in Washington DC finding in March the administration should screen potential expulsions to make sure families aren’t being sent back to places where they would be persecuted or tortured. Last year, a federal judge ruled Title 42 couldn’t be applied to families, but the Biden administration appealed.
The Trump administration policy, which has largely expelled single adults, has long proved controversial among public health officials and members of the president’s party.
"I continue to be disappointed, deeply disappointed in the administration’s response. Title 42 goes against everything this country stands for," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said earlier this week.
In October, Harold Koh, a senior State Department legal official, resigned his post in protest of the policy, which was at the time being used to send Haitian border-crossers out of the US en masse, even as their home country was in the midst of a political crisis after the assassination of president Jovenel Moïse.
“I believe this Administration’s current implementation of the Title 42 authority continues to violate our legal obligation not to expel or return (“refouler”) individuals who fear persecution, death, or torture, especially migrants fleeing from Haiti,” he wrote of the decision, adding “lawful, more humane alternatives plainly exist.”
Title 42 was the pet idea of Stephen Miller, a staunchly anti-immigration advocate who advised Donald Trump and helped create other controversial anti-immigration measures like family separate and the “Wait in Mexico” policy, and sometimes cited
Mr Miller reportedly began pushing for the president to use his public health powers in 2018, long before the coronavirus pandemic. In 2020, the Trump White House overruled the CDC to implement Title 42, even as public health officials argued there was no legitimate public health reason to put the order in place. Meanwhile, the administration also ignored basic public health measures during that same time, such as encouraging mask-wearing and health screenings at airports.
The Biden administration sought to soften US policy towards migrants after the boundary-pushing Trump years, but a record-breaking surge of migrants at the border in 2021 tested how far Joe Biden was willing to go to change from his predecessors.
The Biden administration was accused of failing to provide adequate emergency shelter for young migrants crossing the border, and has more than doubled the number of people in migration detention, where coronavirus outbreaks have continued despite Title 42’s ostensible intentions.
