Judge retains virus asylum restrictions
Title 42 was to end; Justice Department plans to appeal
NEW ORLEANS » Pandemicrelated restrictions on migrants seeking asylum on the southern border must continue, a judge ruled Friday in an order blocking the Biden administration’s plan to lift them early next week.
The ruling was just the latest instance of a court derailing the president’s proposed immigration policies along the U.S. border with Mexico.
The Justice Department said the administration will appeal, but the ruling sharply increases the odds that restrictions will not end as planned on Monday. A delay would be a blow to advocates who say rights to seek asylum are being trampled, and a relief to some Democrats who fear that a widely anticipated increase in illegal crossings would put them on the defensive in an already difficult midterm election year.
In Tijuana, Mexico, Yesivet Evangelina Aguilar, 34, cupped her face in her hands and sobbed when she learned of the decision from an Associated Press reporter. “I feel like there is no hope left,” said Aguilar, who fled the Mexican state of Guerrero nearly a year ago after her brother was killed. “It feels so bad.”
Aguilar was blocked by U.S. authorities from applying for asylum when she and her 10-year-old daughter went to the Tijuana-San Diego port of entry nine months ago. On Friday, she was lying in a tent at Agape Mision Mundial, where scores of migrants are camped. Some have been there for months or years. Aguilar’s life in waiting has been not only tedious but dangerous. On Thursday night, a fellow migrant was shot in the neck by a stray bullet from a shootout outside the shelter.
Migrants have been expelled more than 1.9 million times since March 2020 under Title 42, a public health provision that denies them a chance to request asylum under U.S. law and international treaty on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.
U.S. District Judge Robert Summerhays in Lafayette, La., ordered that the restrictions stay in place while a lawsuit led by Arizona and Louisiana — and now joined by 22 other states — plays out in court.
Summerhays sided with the states in ruling that President Joe Biden’s administration failed to follow administrative procedures requiring public notice and time to gather public comment on the plan to end the restrictions. And he said the states made the case that they would suffer harm if the restrictions end.
The judge cited what he said were the government’s own predictions that ending the restrictions would likely increase border crossings threefold, to as many as 18,000 daily. That, he added, would result in more migrants being processed in congregate settings where contagious disease can be spread.