This article was written by Marisa Powers and Tasha Khosla.
Introduction
Title 42, a public health order, “allows Customs and Border Protection to turn migrants away without allowing them to file for asylum.” This order was put in place by Former President Trump in March 2020 to protect public health. The Biden Administration is now planning to repeal Title 42 by May 23 but is facing backlash from both Democrats and Republicans.
Campus Conservative, Marisa Powers
More than 1.7 million migrants have been turned away at the border in the past two years under Title 42, enacted at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Former Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf states, “as bad as the crisis has been for the past 14 months, I think Title 42 in many ways has masked the real crisis.” The number of migrants who have crossed the United States border in the past year is unprecedented, and there are no signs of a cease to the crisis.
In my view, repealing Title 42 would be a mistake considering the state of the border presently. 62% of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of immigration, as there have been more than 2.5 million illegal Southern border crossings in the year that he has been in office. And with the repeal of Title 42, the Department of Homeland Security is “bracing for a surge of more than 170,000 migrants after May 23.” If the administration had stronger measures in place to control the extensive amount of migrants crossing the border, then the repeal of Title 42 would not be so dire. The plans they do have to prepare for the influx of migrants after May 23 are nowhere near sufficient to combat the issue since they stopped construction on the border wall. With the repeal of Title 42, there is no longer even a pretense of protecting public health.
Campus Liberal, Tasha Khosla
As aforementioned, Title 42 is a health measure meant to protect the nation from illnesses, but many conflate it with immigration control. The policy itself left behind many issues that the Biden Administration needs to address. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council, stated, “One statistic most obviously demonstrates Title 42’s failure. Since Title 42 went into effect, the Border Patrol expelled a staggering 94 percent of single adult migrants it encountered who were from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador. If Title 42 were a successful deterrent, we would expect such a near total shutdown of the border to lead to declining apprehension numbers.”
From my perspective, Title 42 should have been repealed long ago. Across the nation, Covid restrictions are constantly being lifted as the pandemic is monitored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As other restrictions are being lifted, it makes sense that Title 42 would also be repealed. Moreover, the policy actually led to an increased amount of repeat attempts by expelled migrants to cross the border. So, Title 42 was not an effective policy, and while apprehension towards its repeal is understandable, the fact remains that Title 42 was never meant to be a form of immigration control. Title 42 is not the issue the Biden Administration should be focusing on — humanely handling the anticipated surge of migrants is.
Conclusion
While both sides do disagree on Title 42’s repeal, both agree that the Biden Administration needs to be better prepared for the consequences of the repeal as immigration is projected to surge in the coming weeks.
The Conversation is an Opinion column written by two students of opposing political viewpoints, used to discuss current events from different perspectives.
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