COVID-19 asylum limits at Us-mexico border to end
WASHINGTON – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday that it is ending a policy that limited asylum at the U.s.mexico border to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
The use of public health powers had been widely criticized by Democrats and immigration advocates as an excuse for the United States to shirk its obligations to provide haven to people fleeing persecution. The policy went into effect under President Donald Trump in March 2020. Since then, migrants trying to enter the U.S. have been expelled more than 1.7 million times.
The policy – known as the Title 42 authority, named for a 1944 public health law to prevent communicable disease – will end on paper, but it will not take effect until May 23 to allow border officials time to prepare. The Associated Press first reported the change earlier this week.
The policy was increasingly hard to justify scientifically as restrictions ended across the U.S.
The federal order says efforts by the Department of Homeland Security to provide vaccines to migrants at the border will step up in the next two months.
DHS said this week that about 7,100 migrants were coming daily, compared with an average of about 5,900 a day in February – on pace to match or exceed highs from last year, 2019 and other peak periods. But border officials said they are planning for as many as 18,000 arrivals daily, and that seems certain to cause challenges for border-region Democrats in tight reelection races. Some have warned that the Biden administration is unprepared to handle the situation.
Homeland Security said it created a Southwest Border Coordinating Center to respond to any sharp increases, with Maryann Tierney, a regional director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as interim leader and a Border
Patrol official as deputy.
Officials also are working on additional ground and air transportation options and tents to house the expected influx, and the Border Patrol has already hired civilians.
Instead of conducting patrols and uncovering smuggling activity, those federal agents spend about 40% of their time caring for people already in custody and administrative tasks that are unrelated to border security.
The agency hoped to free up its agents to go back into the field by hiring civilians for easier-to-delegate jobs such as making sure that microwaved burritos are served properly, checking holding cells, and the time-consuming work of collecting information for immigration court papers.
Still, administration officials acknowledged the fixes are only temporary measures.
The limits went into place in March 2020 under the Trump administration as coronavirus cases soared. While officials said at the time that it was a way to keep COVID-19 out of the United States, there always has been criticism that the restrictions were used as an excuse to seal the border to migrants unwanted by then-president Donald Trump. It was perhaps the broadest of Trump’s actions to restrict crossings and crack down on migrants.