TITLE 42 HAS ENDANGERED THOUSANDS OF MIGRANTS

The American public supports fair and humane asylum policies, and it is long past time to restore asylum protections, as U.S. and international laws require.

For more than two years, Title 42, an obscure 1944 public health order invoked by the Trump administration at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, has closed our southern border and denied thousands of people their legal and human right to seek asylum. This is just one in Trump’s arsenal of anti-immigrant policies that included the Muslim travel ban, zero tolerance, family separation and the Migrant Protection Protocols, known as MPP or “Remain in Mexico.”

Despite President Joe Biden’s public promise of a more humane approach, it took his administration more than a year to act to lift Title 42.

On April 1, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged what was evident all along, that Title 42 was “no longer necessary” and should end. However, a federal judge ordered that Title 42 remain in place, requiring the U.S. government to continue to expel people in violation of their fundamental right to seek asylum.

To date, the Trump and Biden administrations have together made 1.8 million expulsions under Title 42. The vast majority look like me, my husband and our children. Sadly, unsurprisingly, the people our government is expelling are disproportionately Black and Brown migrants. Who can honestly claim that Title 42 is anything more than a racist charade when the U.S. is simultaneously welcoming thousands of Ukrainian migrants seeking asylum and expelling tens or thousands of Haitian migrants on chartered flights to Haiti?

I recall when Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015 with the false, inflammatory claim that “when Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best . ... They’re bringing drugs.

They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

I was physically sickened by his hateful words, and, later, the cruel bigotry that seemed to inform his every decision and policy regarding immigration and our border. I am outraged, heartbroken and afraid that Trump’s legacy of cruel intolerance toward migrants and people seeking asylum is now mainstream ideology in the form of Title 42.

We are better than this.

This is why the Biden administration must loudly defend the CDC’s decision to lift Title 42 in the court and the court of public opinion and must oppose any legislative efforts to delay its rescission. Likewise, members of Congress must speak out and vote against any measure that serves to make Title 42 our country’s de facto immigration policy.

Under U.S. and international law, people fleeing persecution, violence and war have a legal and human right to seek asylum in the United States. It is not a crime to request asylum.

During most of the pandemic, the border remained open to tens of thousands of people each day and, more recently, to nearly all travelers — except people seeking asylum — with no significant impact on the spread of COVID-19.

Instead of protecting the American public, Title 42 has put thousands of migrants’ lives in danger. According to the nonprofit Human Rights First, there have been nearly 10,000 documented cases in which people blocked from seeking asylum have been kidnapped, tortured, raped and violently attacked in Mexico.

In addition to the court order blocking the Biden administration from lifting Title 42, there are efforts in Congress to pass legislation to keep it in place, including the Public Health and Border Security Act, which supporters want to insert into must-pass COVID-19 relief legislation. They say the bill is a stopgap measure until the administration implements a plan to unwind Title 42. In reality, it may extend Title 42 indefinitely, ending asylum as we know it on our southern border.

U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-California, and Reps. Judy Chu, D-Monterey Park, and Raul Ruiz, D-Palm Desert, are outspoken champions of the right to asylum. Other members of the California delegation must speak out as well. Because the fight to end Title 42 will take all of us.

Time and again, our San Diego-Tijuana region has proven we can welcome people seeking refuge safely and with dignity. Since October 2018, the San Diego Rapid Response Network’s migrant shelter has served more than 68,000 migrants. A responsible unwinding of Title 42 must include increased and streamlined federal funding for nongovernmental organizations to ensure their capacity to provide these essential humanitarian services throughout the border region.

The ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties, together with our coalition partners — including the California Welcoming Task Force, the San Diego Rapid Response Network, and the ACLU Border Humanity Project — calls on the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress to uphold our nation’s legal and moral obligation to provide all people fleeing persecution a fair opportunity to seek refuge in the United States.

This is who we are.