By: Staff Writer
May 12, 2023
With the Donald Trump induced Title 42 policy set to come to an end yesterday, reports of thousands of migrants from Central America and Mexico have been piling up at America’s Southern border for hopes of a chance to make it in.
After taking office in January 2021, President Joe Biden and his administration kept the Trump era policy place and continued to defend it as a public health measure for more than a year.
Citing a diminished public health risk, in April 2022 the US Centers for Disease Control – which oversees US health policy – signaled it would end the policy.
But with federally mandated Covid measures ending on May 11, officials say the time is finally up for Title 42, which it did at midnight on May 11.
Title 42 is the section of the Public Health Service Act of 1944 that allows the government to halt the entry of people and imports in order to prevent the introduction of a communicable disease from outside the borders of the continental United States.
In March 2020, when Covid-19 was spreading across the country, the Trump administration authorized the rule’s use under the national public health emergency to swiftly expel people who crossed into the United States illegally.
Two months ago, the Biden administration said that on May 11, the public health crisis designation would end. In effect, officials said, this meant that the use of Title 42 would come to an end, too.
The policy has been used to authorize over 2.8 million expulsions from the US to cities along the US-Mexico border and caused a humanitarian catastrophe for migrants seeking safety and well-being in the United States. For three years due to this policy, thousands of people have been left abandoned with limited access to shelter, basic services, and threats of violence in cities which do not have the security or resources to meet the massive needs.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams in cities such as Reynosa, Matamoros, Piedras Negras and Ciudad Acuña have witnessed how this policy left vulnerable people without access to basic health services and mental health support and exposed thousands of people to extreme weather, lack of shelter, insufficient access to food, and insecurity.
“It’s great news that Title 42 will finally end. It falsely used public health to block people from seeking asylum and put countless people in danger,” said Adriana Palomares, MSF country director in Mexico and Central America. “We were hoping that processes to welcome those seeking protection would be restored with the end of Title 42. Unfortunately, the Biden administration appears focused on erecting new barriers to accessing asylum, including through the final rule released today that will bar many from accessing the protection they desperately need. We know that policies of deterrence don’t work, and all this will do is expose more people to violence and danger.”
The White House announced last week that it was sending 1,500 more US troops to the Mexico border in anticipation of the expiration of Title 42. This is in addition to the 2,500 soldiers already deployed there.
White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday that the Biden administration was ready to handle an expected surge in migration.
“Right now we believe we have a robust plan, a multi-agency plan, to do this in a humane way,” said Jean-Pierre, stressing that Washington is pursuing a policy of “enforcement, deterrence and diplomacy”.