The Center for Disease Control (CDC) partially lifted a Trump administration order this week that prevented many migrants and children fleeing persecution from entering the United States. The 2020 order, known as Title 42, allowed the CDC to use COVID-19 as an excuse to bar over 750,000 people from entering at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Stephen Yale-Loehr, professor of immigration law at Cornell Law School and author of a leading 21-volume immigration law series says the CDC order is a good first step, but more needs to be done:
“The Title 42 order has been heavily criticized, and properly so. Immigrant advocates claim that the public health order has put migrants in harm’s way by forcing them to remain in Mexico. For example, on June 30, over 100 groups urged the Biden administration to fully rescind Title 42 expulsions.
“Unaccompanied noncitizen children had been temporarily exempted from the Title 42 order. Today’s announcement makes that exemption official, based on the CDC’s assessment that it can properly assess the risk of COVID-19 transmission among children and provide vaccinations to children ages 12 and over.
“The CDC should go further by rescinding its Title 42 order for everyone. There is no valid public health rationale for expelling people fleeing persecution, when millions of other people enter the United States on visas every year.”
