US Judge Lash Block Migrant Entry Policy
The contentious Donald Trump administration policy, which has been slammed as cruel and ineffectual, appears to have come to an end after a federal court in the US decided on Tuesday that the government could not use public health regulations to bar the entry of refugees seeking asylum.
Title 42, which has been used to expulse hundreds of thousands of people since it was utilized in the early stages of the Covid-19 outbreak, was deemed by Judge Emmet Sullivan to be a “arbitrary and capricious” policy that contravened federal regulations.
The Department of Homeland Security requested in a stay motion that Tuesday’s decision be put on hold for five weeks, emphasizing that this was only a temporary solution.
According to a statement, the court’s order will be delayed to give the administration time to plan for a smooth transition to new border procedures.
To be clear, Title 42 would continue in effect for a while under the unopposed motion. We will get ready for a smooth transition to new border policies throughout the time of this freeze.
The administration would have time to put measures in place to stop the influx of migrants at the southern border with Mexico, the majority of whom seek asylum, according to the extension until midnight on December 21.
President Joe Biden and his Democratic Party, whom the Republicans have repeatedly attempted to portray as soft on illegal immigration, are suffering from an increasing political headache as a result of the soaring numbers at the border, where more than 200,000 have been intercepted each month this year.
Republican immigration hardliner Greg Abbott, the just re-elected governor of Texas, tweeted before to the decision that he would be using the national guard and gunboats to turn back migrants.
He wrote on Twitter that he had “invoked the Invasion Clauses of the US & Texas Constitutions to fully enable Texas to take unprecedented steps to defend our state against an invasion.”
The Mexican drug cartels would be “designated as foreign terrorist organizations,” he claimed, and he would be able to “construct a border wall” thanks to those provisions.
Huge success
The decision on Tuesday followed a lawsuit filed in January by the American Civil Liberties Union, which charged the Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol with “summary expulsion” of weak asylum seekers who exhibited no symptoms of Covid infection.
According to Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the ACLU who lead the action, “this is a tremendous win and one that truly has life-and-death stakes.”
“We have always maintained that applying Title 42 to asylum seekers was cruel and solely motivated by politics. In a statement, he expressed the hope that the verdict will put an end to the terrible policy once and for all.
The decision came six months after a judge in Louisiana ruled in a separate lawsuit that Biden’s administration, which took over Donald Trump’s Title 42 policy, could not abandon it.
The judge in that case ruled that discontinuing the use of Title 42 rule would be against established government protocol.
Even though Biden’s staff planned to stop using Title 42, it has nonetheless kept a close eye on it.
In the year leading up to September 22, border officers recorded a record 2.3 million interactions with migrants along the land border with Mexico.
Title 42 was criticized as being “inhumane” and described as a hastily put together immigration scheme masquerading as a health policy that was suitable for neither.
The law permits the prompt ejection of any foreigner or non-resident attempting to enter the nation without a visa. It was first enacted in the 19th century in an effort to control dangerous diseases.
A border agent can implement a Title 42 expulsion without the drawn-out interview process that is often required because there is no legal procedure or official deportation to the country of origin.
However, a Title 42 expulsion carries no stigma, unlike a conventional expulsion, which typically results in a prohibition on making attempts to re-enter the country.
Some have pointed out that this implies that anyone caught crossing the border illegally can simply try again.
Title 42 was “a failing border management policy that produced havoc along the border, enormous harm to innocent people seeking our protection, and weakened our standing on the global stage,” according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, director of policy at the American Immigration Council.
“Judge Sullivan’s judgment is… a long overdue step toward establishing a humane, safe, and orderly system of border protection.”
AFP
