CBS News reports that while Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar “implored the Supreme Court to deny the Republican-led states’ request, she also asked the high court to keep Title 42 in place for several days if it ruled in the Biden administration’s favor.”
Following a lower court ruling last month finding the CDC had inadequately explained its rationale behind the public health order, the Biden administration said it would lift the policy by Dec. 21. GOP states then ran to an appeals court, without success. But on Friday, Chief Justice John Roberts granted their request to temporarily block the planned end, and sought an immediate response from the administration. The federal government is now seeking a Dec. 27 end date should the court side with it.
The legal back and forth has confused and pained migrants still seeking safety at our border. “They’re treating us like terrorists, carrying high-powered weapons,” Otnik Parra, a Venezuelan migrant, told The Dallas Morning News. “We come in peace, ready to get in line and apply for asylum. We’re not doing anything illegal.” The Title 42 policy has actually been counterproductive by increasing the number of apprehensions. “A typical asylum-seeker years ago would go through a port of entry,” advocate Fernando Quiroz told Border Report. “But they are told these ports of entry are closed to them so they have been pushed to cross unlawfully.”
The federal government said in its filing that it “recognizes that the end of the Title 42 orders will likely lead to disruption and a temporary increase in unlawful border crossings. The government in no way seeks to minimize the seriousness of that problem. But the solution to that immigration problem cannot be to extend indefinitely a public-health measure that all now acknowledge has outlived its public-health justification.”
Too many in the media also keep buying into GOP talking points and dehumanizing language about migrants. “It saddens me,” tweeted former senior Border Patrol agent turned whistleblower Jenn Budd, “to see media like MSNBC following the ‘invasion’ or ‘surge’ narrative on the southern border & showing clips of racist Republican leaders blaming Democrats for their own damn policies that intentionally created this crisis.”
Keep in mind that, at certain ports of entry along the southern border, more than 100,000 people legally cross through every single month for shopping, school, business, and visiting loved ones. This is normal along the border, but that’s never framed by Republicans and complicit media as an “invasion” or “surge.”
Department of Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas said following Roberts’ ruling last week that “we will continue our preparations to manage the border in a safe, orderly, and humane way when the Title 42 public health order lifts,” and urged “Congress to use this time to provide the funds we have requested for border security and management and advance the comprehensive immigration measures President Biden proposed on his first day in office.”
But as California Sen. Alex Padilla recently noted, Republicans complain and complain but have no actual plans to address the border, other than to continue the failed Title 42 order.
“Here’s the biggest frustration for all the Republicans’ rhetoric about chaos at the border: No. 1, they have yet to come forward with a plan of how to better handle this scenario,” he told ABC News. “Number 2, they have not been willing to commit the additional resources that the departments and agencies say that they need to handle this big influx.” Republicans rejected the immigration framework that would have continued Title 42 for at least another year because it contained permanent relief for young undocumented immigrants. The answer from Republicans is just always “no.”
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