Biden Administration Has Been Planning To End Title 42 Border Policy

A top official at the Department of Homeland Security has planned to tell Mexico that a controversial Trump-era border policy implemented during the pandemic could end in April, which could lead to an increase in immigrants arriving at the border and a strain on resources, according to documents. taken by BuzzFeed News.

The existence of the plan, which was revealed in a draft document, occurred when the Biden administration dealt with the fallout from two federal court orders on the border policy known as Title 42, which has been met with reprimands from Senate Democrats and immigrant advocates. long denied it was illegal.

Former president Donald Trump first cited Title 42 as a way to contain the coronavirus by deporting immigrants at the border and blocking access to the US asylum system. Some immigrants were quickly deported to Mexico, and others were flown back to their countries. President Joe Biden continued to enforce the policy during court challenges, deporting people at the border more than 1 million times in the process.

But a pair of court rulings — including one in which a judge ordered immigrant children to be turned back at the border — along with an evolving federal response to the pandemic in the U.S. could end the policy. One senior DHS official told BuzzFeed News that the agency is planning to end Title 42. And the draft document obtained by BuzzFeed News also references the department’s continued “contingency plan” when that happens. On Wednesday, Reuters also reported that the administration is “leaning” to end Title 42.

In the meantime, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is expected to meet with Mexican officials next week.

DHS officials specifically plan to stress to Mexico that if Title 42 no longer exists, the agency should return to processing immigrants who cross the border without authorization through normal pre-COVID practices, which would allow them to seek asylum and protection in the US. Before Title 42, immigrants apprehended at the border could apply for asylum and have their claims evaluated to determine whether they could remain in the country to pursue their case.

But such prepandemic practices could “seriously strain” border resources and lead to a challenging humanitarian situation in northern Mexico, the draft DHS document warned. Department officials also expressed concern about the “historically high and extremely high” number of immigrants crossing the border without authorization.

The use of Title 42 has given the Biden administration more than a year to consider changes to border policy and the asylum system. But are there any major changes that will be made when Title 42 goes away? Administration officials are eager to implement a plan to dramatically reshape the way asylum seekers are processed in order to deal with a large backlog of immigration court cases, possibly cutting wait times for some applicants to years. The plan, which has not yet been released in its final version, would shift the power to decide whether certain immigrants encountered at the border are granted asylum from immigration judges to asylum officials.