(Bloomberg) -- The Biden administration announced Friday it plans to lift Trump-era border controls that allowed authorities to quickly expel migrants and asylum seekers during the pandemic.
The public-health authority, known as Title 42, will end May 23, giving officials some time to prepare for an expected influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border that poses significant political and humanitarian challenges for the White House ahead of the midterm elections.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday that the transition period would enable the Department of Homeland Security to implement “appropriate Covid-19 mitigation protocols, such as scaling up a program to provide Covid-19 vaccinations to migrants and prepare for resumption of regular migration.”
About Title 42, the Pandemic Order Biden May Relax: QuickTake
Democratic lawmakers and immigrant-rights advocates long have pressured President Joe Biden to abandon Title 42, saying the policy used Covid-19 as a pretext to abandon legal obligations allowing entry to people seeking asylum. They have generally expressed frustration at the pace at which Biden has rolled back former President Donald Trump's hard-line immigration policies.
Yet administration officials, governors and lawmakers have warned of a potential surge of migrants and asylum seekers at the southwest border if the measure is lifted at a time when apprehensions are already high. That could fuel criticism from Republicans that Biden's policies are causing a rush at the border.
Representative James Comer of Kentucky, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said the termination of Title 42 would make border management “unimaginably worse” by inducing more border crossing attempts.
“This massive influx of illegal border crossers will further overwhelm U.S. Border Patrol officers and facilities, which are already operating well beyond their capacity in many sectors,” Comer said in a statement.
Removal Proceedings
DHS and State Department officials acknowledged that threat in a call with reporters Friday, saying they expect smugglers to spread misinformation about the Title 42 termination to take advantage of vulnerable migrants.
Officials from both agencies stressed that anyone crossing the border without authorization will be placed in removal proceedings and deported if they can't establish a legal basis to stay in the U.S. DHS and the Justice Department are ramping up prosecutions of smugglers and others involved in border-related crimes, the officials said.
One of the officials said the decision not to end the policy until May 23 reflected a desire to give a Covid vaccination program targeted at migrants time to ramp up.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the U.S. has “put in place a comprehensive, whole-of-government strategy to manage any potential increase in the number of migrants encountered at our border.”
The U.S. officials also outlined the Biden administration's recent efforts to improve the asylum process, including a new rule to streamline processing at the border, but called on Congress to pass new legislation to overhaul the U.S. immigration system.
A number of economists and Federal Reserve officials have advocated loosening U.S. immigration restrictions, especially with employers trying to fill a near-record level of job openings.
Earlier this year, Richmond Fed chief Thomas Barkin and Minneapolis's Neel Kashkari said that allowing more workers to come from abroad would help to ease the pinch caused by an aging population.
Preparing For a Surge
The Department of Homeland Security said this week that authorities were encountering migrants roughly 7,100 times daily, up from 6,800 in February, putting the U.S. on pace to potentially exceed previous peaks.
To prepare for a surge, DHS said this week it's deploying more agents to the border, building more holding facilities, expanding processing capacity and acquiring more means of transportation for migrants.
Some Democrats also have expressed apprehension about lifting Title 42. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia this week urged the CDC to leave the policy in place, citing rising global cases of Covid-19 and high border arrest numbers. Senators Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona urged the administration not to lift the policy, and Kelly said Friday the administration had made the “wrong decision.”
“It's unacceptable to end Title 42 without a plan and coordination in place to ensure a secure, orderly, and humane process at the border,” he said.
Manchin called Friday's decision “frightening” and said Title 42 should remain in place “until we have comprehensive, bipartisan immigration reform.”
‘Keep Pushing'
Another Democratic Senator -- Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire -- said in a tweet that ending the policy “will likely lead to a migrant surge that the administration does not appear to be ready for.”
“I'll keep pushing the administration to strengthen border security & look forward to hearing directly from border agents during my upcoming trip to the border,” said Hassan, who is up for re-election this year.
The Trump administration imposed the border limits in March of 2020 as the coronavirus rapidly spread. Officials said at the time that it was designed to keep the virus out of the U.S,. but immigrant-rights advocates called it an excuse to accomplish Trump's goal of effectively closing the border to migrants he once derided as rapists and criminals.
It was one of the most sweeping actions Trump took to crack down on migration. Title 42 resulted in migrants quickly being expelled from the U.S. roughly 1.7 million times in the past two years without the chance to apply for asylum as is their right under U.S. and international law.
While Trump's defenders hailed the measure as effective, critics say it has led to an increase in border crossings. Migrants returned to Mexico under Title 42 are sent back without a deportation order, which may encourage them to try to enter the U.S. again. The rate at which people tried to cross the border multiple times jumped from 7% in March 2020 to 27% by the end of 2021, according to the American Immigration Council.
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
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