Joe Biden blasted for keeping Title 42 for asylum seekers

WASHINGTON — Dozens of House and Senate Democrats tore into President Biden on Thursday for keeping in place a Trump-era immigration policy that allows the government to turn away asylum seekers without first hearing their cases.

Title 42, first implemented in March 2020 at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, allows border agents to push migrants back across the US-Mexico frontier for public health reasons. The Biden administration has repeatedly tried to end the policy, but later backtracked as the immigration crisis at the southern border exploded.

“Anyone who tells you that the only way to secure our border is to punish asylum seekers is lying,” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) told reporters. “It’s why we are appalled to see President Biden replicate President Trump’s immigration strategy.”

Menendez was among 77 Democratic members of Congress who signed a letter calling on Biden to reverse Title 42 — and stop pursuing a new rule that Biden proposed Jan. 5 that would bar migrants who don’t first apply for asylum in a third country before traveling to the US.

“Last year, we welcomed your administration’s announcement that it would move to end Title 42,” lawmakers said in the letter. “We are therefore distressed by the deeply inconsistent choice to expand restrictions on asylum seekers after your administration determined it was no longer necessary for public health.”

Advocates of Title 42 say it has helped stifle the ongoing crisis at the southern border. A Department of Homeland Security official attributed a more than 50% drop in daily immigration encounters in January from December’s average of 7,000 to the policy’s continuation and other Biden programs to expel migrants, CNN reported Thursday.

“Title 42 is intended to be a public health tool — that’s what we’re told. Does anybody seriously believe the administration is doing this to prevent COVID-19?” Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) said. “It’s a stopgap measure kept in place by far-right judges and expanded under this administration that denies the right to asylum by failing to address the underlying structural problems with our immigration system.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) also criticized the policy, saying Biden’s new policies “only make it more difficult for the most vulnerable to legally access the United States.”

“The right to seek asylum is enshrined in domestic and international law and the United States is a shining example, and we have sought and aspired to be an example to uphold international law,” Ocasio-Cortez said at the briefing. “Instead, this administration is making it effectively impossible to seek refuge at our border.”

Biden’s recent immigration-muffling efforts — which also include enhanced use of expedited removal for those who do not claim a fear of persecution — are a stark change from his decision last year to order Title 42’s end, but came after months of litigation.

A Louisiana federal judge in May blocked Biden’s order to end the policy after a lawsuit by 24 Republican state attorneys general warning that ending the policy could spark a surge of migrants that would overwhelm immigration resources.

Six months later, a senior US district judge ordered the policy’s end in a ruling on a separate lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of asylum seekers.

Weeks later, the Biden administration abruptly reversed course when the Department of Homeland Security said it would ask the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia for a stay on a previous ruling while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention drew up a replacement policy.

The matter is before the Supreme Court, which issued a stay last month that keeps Title 42 in place until it can hear an appeal brought by 19 Republican-led states this spring. The states argue they should be able to step in on the grounds that the Biden administration abandoned its defense of the policy.