Nov. 15 (UPI) — A federal judge ruled to overturn a border policy enacted under former President Donald Trump which was used to turn away more than 1 million asylum seekers at the southern border.
Title 42 of the U.S. Code was issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to greatly limit the entrance of migrants from certain countries into the United States in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. On Tuesday, Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ended the policy, ruling that it violates the Administrative Procedures Act.
Sullivan called the rule, “arbitrary and capricious,” when he ruled in favor of asylum seekers who filed a lawsuit against the CDC. The judge’s ruling supersedes the decision by U.S. District Judge Robert Summerhays of Louisiana which blocked the Biden administration from lifting the policy in the spring. Summerhays is a Trump-appointed judge.
“With regard to whether defendants could have ‘ramped up’ vaccinations, outdoor processing, and all other available public health measures, the court finds the CDC failed to articulate a satisfactory explanation for why such measures were not feasible,” Sullivan wrote in his decision.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the plaintiff in the District of Columbia case, called for the Biden administration to immediately restart asylum processing at the southern border.
“For over two years, the Title 42 policy has unjustly slammed the door on people seeking safety in the United States,” said Melissa Crow, director of litigation at the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies. “Desperate families, children, and adults have been deprived of their right to seek asylum and returned to countries where they face violence, torture, and even death.”
ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said Title 42 was “never about public health,” and was used to block asylum seekers from getting a hearing.
“We have said all along that using Title 42 against asylum seekers was inhumane and driven purely by politics. Hopefully this ruling will end this horrific policy once and for all,” Gelernt said.
Title 42 was established in 1944 as a way to give the government authority and the means to issue a federal quarantine.
The Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are yet to make statements about the ruling.
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