Justin Bullock, FISM News
The Biden administration has extended Title 42, which allows border agents to turn away undocumented immigrants without a hearing. The CDC released an order of their own saying that the suspension of allowing non-citizens to seek asylum is “necessary to protect the public health” because it “creates a serious danger of the introduction of COVID-19 into the United States.”
The Biden administration had been under pressure from many Democrats and liberal organizations to repeal this Trump-initiated order, but on Monday the White House announced it was extended indefinitely due to the rise of COVID cases and that if the order was repealed it would “exacerbate overcrowding at DHS facilities.” The ACLU has announced plans to seek an “immediate injunction,” and says that the rationale for Title 42 is not based on any scientific evidence.
We warned the Biden administration that we'd see them in court if they continued to misuse Title 42 to unlawfully expel people seeking protection at the southern border.
We meant it. https://t.co/obEAw0ddtD
— ACLU (@ACLU) August 2, 2021
This move by the Biden White House comes shortly after the Department of Justice filed suit against Texas and its governor for entering a state executive order prohibiting the transportation of undocumented immigrants in Texas by anyone other than law enforcement. In many ways the Texas executive order is similar to the federal Title 42 order and Texas has claimed the same rational to justify it.
Texas’s justification for its order is that undocumented immigrants present a serious danger of the spread of COVID-19 which is exactly the same as President Biden and the CDC’s justification for Title 42. As a result this could throw a wrinkle in the federal government’s case against Texas, especially if Texas can demonstrate that the federal government is failing to effectively respond to both the COVID-19 crisis as well as the immigration crisis at the Texas-Mexico border.