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The Biden administration is planning to end a controversial policy, known as Title 42, that allows the U.S. government to turn away asylum-seeking migrants over Covid-19 concerns.
Finally.
Title 42 was introduced during Donald Trump's presidency. It was backed by then-Trump adviser Stephen Miller, the architect of some of Trump's harshest immigration policies. Citing the policy’s cruelty, critics have condemned the Biden administration for upholding it.
Many Americans became familiar with the law after the Biden administration used it to justify turning away Haitian migrants seeking to enter the U.S. The imagery of border agents’ yanking the migrants by their collars and chasing them on horseback sparked public outrage, but the administration defied Democrats and progressive activists by keeping it in place.
“I continue to be disappointed — deeply disappointed — in the administration’s response,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on a call with reporters this month. “Title 42 goes against everything this country stands for.”
Last year, Schumer delivered a speech from the Senate floor calling on the administration to end “these hateful and xenophobic Trump policies that disregard our refugee laws.”
Some centrist and conservative lawmakers and governors have called for the policy to continue. But two dramatic changes in American life make that morally and practically indefensible.
To start, most states have drastically dialed back their Covid safety measures, from masking requirements to vaccination mandates. It makes no sense to turn away migrants seeking asylum out of fear of a virus that much of the country — lawmakers included — seems almost apathetic about at this point.
That leads to the second reason the law can’t be upheld in good faith: The war in Ukraine has exposed the hypocrisy in U.S. immigration enforcement, especially when it comes to Title 42. After Russia invaded Ukraine, the Biden administration said some Ukrainians should be exempt from being expelled on public health grounds. Activists rightly noted that Ukrainians are just as likely to have and spread Covid as people fleeing other countries and demanded the administration’s leniency be extended to other refugees, as well.
Some lawmakers have highlighted the hypocrisy, too. Democratic Reps. Mondaire Jones of New York and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this month:
There is every reason to extend that same level of compassion and exercise that same discretion to suspend deportations to Haiti — and, in light of your own findings about the ongoing humanitarian crisis there, no excuse not to.
Ending Title 42 is a no-brainer. Today, its only purpose seems to be to facilitate discrimination, a truth far too obvious to ignore any longer.
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