Biden administration doubles down on use of Trump policy to expel

On Oct 12, 2021

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas doubled down this week on the Biden administration’s use of a controversial Trump-era policy known as Title 42, dismissing recent criticism from a former senior State Department official who called the policy “illegal” and “inhumane.”

In a Tuesday interview aired at an international security conference hosted by the nonprofit Soufan Center in Doha, Qatar, Mayorkas told Yahoo News Chief Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff that Title 42 “is not an immigration policy that we in this administration would embrace.” Rather, he insisted, the policy is seen as a “public health imperative.”

U.S. Border Patrol agents watch from their vehicles as migrants cross from a camp in Del Rio, Texas to go get food supplies on September 22, 2021 as seen from Ciudad Acuna, Mexico. U.S. immigration authorities have been deporting planeloads of migrants directly to Haiti, and others are reportedly being released into the United States to follow their asylum claims. (John Moore/Getty Images) — Migrants cross from a camp in Del Rio, Texas, to get food supplies in Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, on Sept. 22, as U.S. Border Patrol agents watch from their vehicles. (John Moore/Getty Images)

Title 42, which has been used by the Trump and Biden administrations to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants who have crossed into the U.S. over the border with Mexico, refers to an obscure public health authority that allows the government to block noncitizens from entering the country during a pandemic. The Trump administration first invoked Title 42 in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, effectively sealing off the southern border. An emergency order issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allowed immigration officials to quickly expel mostly Mexican and Central American migrants back to their home countries without giving them a chance to apply for asylum or other protections in the United States.

According to the Associated Press, the Trump White House pressured the CDC to issue its initial Title 42 order back in March 2020 over the objections of the agency’s top scientists. Those health experts argued there was no evidence that the policy would slow the spread of the coronavirus.

While human rights advocates and public health experts have called for the policy to be revoked, the Biden administration has instead defended it in federal court. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, 938,045 migrants were expelled from the U.S. under Title 42 between October 2020 and August 2021, including more than 7,000 Haitians who’d attempted to cross the border in Del Rio, Texas, in late September.

Haitian migrants who are seeking asylum wait to get into a van to be transported from Del Rio, Texas, the United States, Sept. 24, 2021. (Nick Wagner/Xinhua via Getty Images) — Haitian migrants seeking asylum wait to get into a van to be transported from Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 24. (Nick Wagner/Xinhua via Getty Images)

Last week Politico reported that Harold Koh, an outgoing senior adviser and the sole political appointee on the State Department’s legal team, had issued a scathing internal memo arguing that the Biden administration’s use of Title 42 to expel migrants, particularly those fleeing Haiti, violates U.S. and international laws against returning people to countries where they fear persecution, death or torture.

Koh wrote that expulsions to Haiti, which is suffering from widespread violence, food insecurity and political strife, are…