Joe Biden's government appealed on Friday a federal court ruling that prohibits it from using a public health rule, known as Title 42, to turn away families with children seeking asylum at the border and quickly expel them from the United States.
Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan of the District of Columbia ruled Thursday that it is illegal for the government to use that measure, launched in 2020 by the coronavirus pandemic, to deny immigrants that right.
With the wide availability of tests, vaccines and other protective measures, the magistrate noted, the risk of transmission of the virus at the border can be mitigated.
Evicting migrant families means
denying them "the opportunity to seek the humanitarian benefits"
of US law.
The case focused on families with children, so adults who arrive alone can continue to be expelled from the country under Title 42.
[The number of migrants crowded in the border city of Acuña in Mexico rises to 10,000]
Haitian migrants use a dam to cross to and from the United States from Mexico on Friday, September 17, 2021, in Del Rio, Texas.
AP
The judge established
a period of two weeks
before his sentence came into force to give the authorities time to appeal the sentence or adapt to it.
The next day, the Administration's attorneys have already filed a notice of appeal with the District of Columbia Circuit court, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The legal dispute occurs as
thousands of families wait on the US-Mexico border
for an opportunity to apply for asylum, with some regions facing a humanitarian crisis.
In South Texas, more than 10,000 irregular immigrants, mostly Haitian nationals, are being held in a makeshift camp under the Del Rio International Bridge.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE), meanwhile, has increased deportation flights to Haiti next week.
Immigrants explain how they managed to reunite with their son thanks to a government program
Sept.
14, 202102: 02
Title 42 is a 1944 health statute that
the Donald Trump Administration used in March 2020
to close the border and prohibit the entry of immigrants due to concerns about the spread of COVID-19.
In practice, it made it possible to block a large part of the asylum requests of immigrant families.
According to data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), 63% of the 178,000 people intercepted at the border in April were expelled expeditiously under this provision.
In August, amid the rise in the delta variant, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
issued a new order
to maintain the rule until the spread of the virus from the border “is no longer a threat. for public health ”.
However, public health experts say that the boost in infections in the country is due to people who refuse to be vaccinated.
In his 58-page ruling against the provision, Sullivan noted that migrant families are deprived of their right to seek protection in the United States and "
face real threats of violence and persecution
."
Haitian migrants use a dam to cross to and from the United States from Mexico, Friday, September 17, 2021, in Del Rio, Texas
Following this ruling, immigrant rights advocates hoped that the Biden administration would overturn the rule.
[Two Honduran migrant children found abandoned on the banks of the Rio Grande in Texas]
"
Given the serious damage that Title 42 policy inflicts on desperate families seeking asylum
and the opinion of the public health community that it is not necessary
, we would have expected the Administration to simply accept the ruling, especially given its repeated assertion of who wants to distance himself from the asylum practices of the Trump Administration, "said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrant Rights Project.