A top health official told a House select subcommittee that a directive that has restricted asylum access at the southwest border since the pandemic was drafted without input from the nation’s top health agency but was instead “handed to” them, a report published Monday states.
Martin Cetron, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s division of global migration and quarantine, told the panel that the idea for the border directive, known as the Title 42 order, “came from outside the CDC subject matter experts.”
Cetron said the proposed Title 42 order, which was issued by the CDC and has allowed border agents to rapidly expel migrants who cross the border without considering their asylum claim since March 2020, was “not drafted by me or my team” but rather was “handed to us,” the report states.
