The controversial “Title 42” regulation in the USA allows migrants to be rejected quickly at the border with Mexico. Actually, the rule decided under Trump should expire on Wednesday. Several states are appealing the decision to the Supreme Court – initially with success.
The US Supreme Court has put the planned expiry of a controversial deportation regulation on hold for the time being. Supreme Court President John Roberts on Monday granted an urgent motion by a number of conservative-governed states to challenge a federal judge’s November ruling. The legal struggle over the regulation decided under former President Donald Trump and known as Title 42 continues.
The regulation introduced in March 2020 stipulates that migrants apprehended at the US-Mexico border must be turned away immediately in order to prevent the further spread of the corona virus. Hundreds of thousands of people have already been deported on the southern border of the USA on the basis of Title 42.
Human rights organizations sharply criticized the regulation. They argue that people are being deprived of the right to apply for asylum under a health policy pretext. Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, still stuck to the rule for a long time. In April, the government then announced that it wanted to lift the rule in May. But that was blocked by a federal judge in southern Louisiana after a lawsuit by conservative-governed states, so Title 42 remained in effect.
In November, a federal judge in the capital Washington ruled that the regulation had to be repealed. Title 42 was subsequently scheduled to end on Wednesday. Conservative-governed states appealed this decision to the Supreme Court. They achieved their first legal success on Monday. However, the decision by Constitutional Judge Roberts does not represent a substantive assessment of the issue. The US government was given until Tuesday afternoon to submit a statement.
A repeal of Title 42 is likely to lead to a further massive increase in the arrival of refugees and migrants who want to reach the USA via Mexico. The number of people apprehended at the border with Mexico has already increased significantly during Biden’s tenure. In the past few days in particular, an unusually high number of migrants have crossed the southern US border near the border town of El Paso, Texas. The mayor of El Paso declared a state of emergency over the weekend due to the high number of migrants. This gives him the opportunity, for example, to convert certain facilities into emergency shelters by ordinance. It also enables the city to ask the state for additional staff to care for and house migrants.
Refugee and migration policy is a highly charged political issue in the United States. Trump’s Republicans accuse Biden and his Democrats of letting people into the country uncontrolled and thus harming the United States.
