The Biden administration was temporarily blocked from ending the Trump-era Title 42 pandemic immigration policy after the Supreme Court granted a request from a group of conservative states that filed an emergency appeal on Monday asking to keep pandemic-era border restrictions.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts kept Title 42 active past the initial expiration date of Dec. 21 by granting an administrative stay to temporarily pause the rollback- pending another order from the Court – at the request of Republican officials in 19 US states, that are saying their termination would mean a surge of new crossings.
Title 42 was invoked as a public-health provision early in the pandemic by former president Donald Trump’s administration to enable officials to turn away asylum seekers and other migrants at the border though many border hawks have come to view it as a necessary tool to manage record migrant encounters and rapidly expel migrants caught at the US-Mexico border.
US border officials have used Title 42 to expel migrants more than a million times in 2021.
Republican state officials’ last-ditch filing follows Friday’s decision of a federal appeals court in Washington to refuse to keep Title 42 restrictions in force, calling them arbitrary and capricious and arguing that the 19 states had waited too long to try to intervene.
The Biden administration has appealed the district court’s order but has not sought to keep the restrictions in place in the meantime, taking a nuanced stance towards the expulsion policy.
Republicans have escalated their pressure on President Biden Monday over his handling of the migrants at the US-Mexican border where the crisis, according to GOP Congressman Kevin McCarthy of California, is spiraling out of control.
As the US officials warned of imminent chaos in border states if the policy ends this week, even some Democrats, such as Sen. Joe Manchin, expressed their hopes that Biden will retain the Title 42 restrictions, whereas immigrants’ rights advocates decry the continuation of a policy that blocks access to asylum for many people.
Be the first to comment