The Biden Administration announced on Tuesday that it will maintain in force a sanitary rule at the border that the Donald Trump government imposed to stop the arrival of undocumented immigrants and prevent the spread of COVID-19.
The Secretary of Homeland Security, Xavier Becerra, explained in a statement that the decision to maintain the ordinance known as Title 42
was taken after considering that a public health crisis has not ceased to exist in the country
since January 27, 2020, when his predecessor, Alex M. Azar, established politics.
As reported by our sister network NBC News, the Biden Administration planned to eliminate this policy on July 31, which in practice has restricted the right of migrants to request asylum at the border.
Border Patrol agents detain a group of more than 1,000 migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, on May 29, 2019.US Customs and Border Protection via AP
Officials said at the time that the guideline was fading as the vaccination campaign progressed and COVID-19 cases declined across the board.
The decision to continue with the measure comes amid the massive spread of the delta variant in the country and the rebound in hospitalizations of unvaccinated people, although the authorities did not specify in the statement exactly what factors their change of opinion was due to. .
The measure must be renewed every 90 days
.
The last time this happened was on April 15, 2021, when Becerra decided to continue with Trump's directive.
And the next time it will be reviewed will be at the end of October.
[The border closure has several US cities suffocated and their mayors plead for it to be reopened]
Under title 42, migrants are expelled to Mexico expeditiously, without the possibility of a judge reviewing their case or processing an asylum application.
There are some exceptions for minors traveling without adults and for families with young children.
Most of the more than 1 million arrests that have occurred so far this fiscal year (October 2020 - June 2021) ended in removal under title 42. Last month, of the 188,000 arrests that were recorded, 103,104 resulted in expedited expulsions covered by this sanitary rule.
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Given the high number of encounters at the border, some Border Patrol agents have expressed concern that
removing Title 42 could result in an increase in illegal crossings
.
However, as the authorities themselves have warned, the high number of arrests creates the false impression that more migrants have arrived at the border, when the data shows that many times they are the same people who have been detained several times after multiple attempts to cross the border throughout the year.
[Kamala Harris's clear message to migrants on her first international trip after taking office]
So far this fiscal year, 454,944 people have been intercepted one or more times, a total figure lower than the same period last year (489,760).
But the total number of arrests (1,119,000) is the highest in a decade.
When Vice President Kamala Harris was asked in an interview with Noticias Telemundo in early June whether Title 42 will continue to be a cornerstone of Washington's immigration policy, Harris responded: "The world is still in the midst of the pandemic. "but"
Title 42 was never intended to be permanent. "