Migrants expelled from U.S. by the Biden administration faced

Roughly 7,600 migrants expelled from the U.S. under a Trump-era pandemic policy have been subject to kidnappings and other attacks since President Joe Biden took office. 

This includes migrant families, adults and children who were kidnapped, sex trafficked, extorted or robbed by cartels and Mexican authorities after being deported to Mexico under the policy known as Title 42.

The new data comes from a Human Rights First report released Thursday about the Biden administration’s use of Title 42, which was first implemented by former President Donald Trump at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic. 

The policy gives the government the power to turn back any migrant caught crossing the border illegally, namely without a visa or without going through a formal border entry, to stop the spread of Covid-19. 

“Over 7,000 attacks is a shocking number but it isn’t surprising that policies like these, which are designed to create order on the border, are ultimately creating additional chaos and and resulting in some really serious harms to migrants that are being returned to Mexico,” said Danilo Zak, senior policy and advocacy associate of National Immigration Forum.

The report is the latest call on the Biden administration to eliminate Title 42, which has been used to address the highest number of migrants attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in two decades.

The report does not address violence that may have occurred to migrants turned back during the Trump administration.

Neither the White House nor the Department of Homeland Security immediately returned requests for comment on the report.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment on the report during a press briefing Thursday, noting she had not seen it, but adding, “that does sound horrifying, not something that you know we would, you know, agree with or be proud of.”

While Biden has worked to roll back many of his predecessor’s hardline immigration policies, he renewed Title 42 in August after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an updated order justifying its use during the ongoing pandemic.

The CDC’s order said the policy would stay in effect until the border migration of non-U.S. citizens from Mexico and Canada has “ceased to be a serious danger to the public health.”

Since the outset of the pandemic, more than 1 million migrants have been expelled under Title 42, according to U.S. Customs and…