Asylum-seeking migrants from Central America sit next to a vehicle stopped by police after crossing the Rio Grande into Eagle Pass, Texas from Mexico along U.S. Route 90, in Hondo, Texas, U.S., June 1, 2022.
Shannon Stapleton | Reuters
The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday to uphold a controversial Trump-era rule that allows Customs and Border Patrol officials to deport migrants at the southern US border as a public health measure in response to the pandemic.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts earlier this month temporarily blocked the Biden administration from ending the controversial policy, dubbed Title 42.
Since 2020, more than 2 million people have been deported to the southern border under the policy.
In November, a D.C. federal district court had ordered the Department of Homeland Security to end the policy by Dec. 21, criticizing the deportations as arbitrary. But Republican-led states intervened in the matter and last week successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to block that lower court ruling.
The deportation policy comes from the Trump administration. In March 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used a provision under the Public Health Services Act, or Title 42, to ban migrants from entering the US from Mexico or Canada due to the risk of spreading Covid. The eviction policy is often referred to simply as Title 42.
But human rights groups and dozens of health experts strongly criticized the policy as a way for the federal government to carry out arbitrary mass deportations at the southern US border under the guise of public health.
The Biden administration continued the policy until April 2022, when the CDC said it took longer to prevent the spread of Covid. The CDC and DHS had planned for the policy to end in May, but the Republican states sued and got a federal court in Louisiana to stop the Biden administration from ending the deportations at that time as well.
Republicans and some Democrats argue that ending the policy will lead to a large increase in migration at the southern border that communities cannot cope with. El Paso, Texas declared a state of emergency on Saturday in response to a recent surge in migrants crossing the border.
