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Why Is Biden Still Relying on an Idea From Stephen Miller?
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/12/why-is-biden-still-relying-on-title-42-to-expel-migrants.html“A Biden administration will listen to scientists and heed their advice,” Joe Biden tweeted last year, one of many pledges to end the politicization of public health that gutted the Trump administration’s ability to respond to the pandemic. But Biden broke his promise on the southern border.
Since coming into office, the Biden administration has relied on an order first invoked by the Centers for Disease Control under Donald Trump to curb migration, ostensibly in the name of public health. Called Title 42, the Trump administration first considered using it to expel asylum-seekers in 2019 on the pretext they were spreading mumps and the flu. Then in March 2020, the coronavirus arrived and Title 42 was finally invoked, effectively sealing U.S. borders. Though the Associated Press reported that CDC officials could not find a public-health reason to shut out asylum seekers, Vice-President Mike Pence ordered them to issue the order anyway, citing the threat of COVID-19, which was already running wild on the U.S. side of the border. One former Pence aide described the plan to the AP as a “Stephen Miller special,” adding that the xenophobic Trump adviser was “all over that.”
Though border crossings have reopened and Border Patrol agents under Biden are now accepting the unaccompanied children turned away in the early days of the directive under Trump, families and single adults are still being expelled without an opportunity to show a fear of persecution in their home country, which is necessary to obtain asylum. Over 1 million people have been expelled without processing due to Title 42 this year alone, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. After being expelled, migrants are subject to frequent attacks in Mexico, including kidnappings and rape at gunpoint, according to a report from the group Human Rights First. A woman from southern Mexico fleeing cartel violence died by suicide in October after learning at the border that Title 42 would block her from claiming asylum, the group reported. On Monday, the reality for migrants at the border will return even closer to that from the Trump era, when the Remain in Mexico policy — requiring asylum seekers to wait on the other side of the border as asylum claims are processed — is reimplemented after a federal judge ordered the administration to do so. The policy has raised the same concerns about violence against asylum seekers.
“Essentially, the United States has no asylum system for families at this point,” says American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt, who is leading a lawsuit to block the order. Filed in August after negotiations to end the policy stalled out, the ACLU is arguing that the policy — dating back to an 1893 code to keep ships from Europe with travelers with cholera from docking — was never meant to turn away individual travelers. Nor does it authorize expulsions, as asylum laws written by Congress do “not deny someone the right to seek protection because of a communicable disease,” as Gelernt explains. Despite a federal judge agreeing with the ACLU and blocking Biden’s order enforcing Title 42 in September, the administration appealed the ruling, insisting that it is still a necessary public-health measure. The policy remains in effect.
“We said after World War II we would never turn our backs again on people fleeing danger,” says Gelernt. “But the Trump administration did it. The assumption and the hope was that was going to be a blip in American history, and yet the Biden administration now has continued to close the border to families. It’s fairly shocking.”
Since coming into office, the Biden administration has relied on an order first invoked by the Centers for Disease Control under Donald Trump to curb migration, ostensibly in the name of public health. Called Title 42, the Trump administration first considered using it to expel asylum-seekers in 2019 on the pretext they were spreading mumps and the flu. Then in March 2020, the coronavirus arrived and Title 42 was finally invoked, effectively sealing U.S. borders. Though the Associated Press reported that CDC officials could not find a public-health reason to shut out asylum seekers, Vice-President Mike Pence ordered them to issue the order anyway, citing the threat of COVID-19, which was already running wild on the U.S. side of the border. One former Pence aide described the plan to the AP as a “Stephen Miller special,” adding that the xenophobic Trump adviser was “all over that.”
Though border crossings have reopened and Border Patrol agents under Biden are now accepting the unaccompanied children turned away in the early days of the directive under Trump, families and single adults are still being expelled without an opportunity to show a fear of persecution in their home country, which is necessary to obtain asylum. Over 1 million people have been expelled without processing due to Title 42 this year alone, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. After being expelled, migrants are subject to frequent attacks in Mexico, including kidnappings and rape at gunpoint, according to a report from the group Human Rights First. A woman from southern Mexico fleeing cartel violence died by suicide in October after learning at the border that Title 42 would block her from claiming asylum, the group reported. On Monday, the reality for migrants at the border will return even closer to that from the Trump era, when the Remain in Mexico policy — requiring asylum seekers to wait on the other side of the border as asylum claims are processed — is reimplemented after a federal judge ordered the administration to do so. The policy has raised the same concerns about violence against asylum seekers.
“Essentially, the United States has no asylum system for families at this point,” says American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt, who is leading a lawsuit to block the order. Filed in August after negotiations to end the policy stalled out, the ACLU is arguing that the policy — dating back to an 1893 code to keep ships from Europe with travelers with cholera from docking — was never meant to turn away individual travelers. Nor does it authorize expulsions, as asylum laws written by Congress do “not deny someone the right to seek protection because of a communicable disease,” as Gelernt explains. Despite a federal judge agreeing with the ACLU and blocking Biden’s order enforcing Title 42 in September, the administration appealed the ruling, insisting that it is still a necessary public-health measure. The policy remains in effect.
“We said after World War II we would never turn our backs again on people fleeing danger,” says Gelernt. “But the Trump administration did it. The assumption and the hope was that was going to be a blip in American history, and yet the Biden administration now has continued to close the border to families. It’s fairly shocking.”
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