D-Day for Title 42 Canceled, But What Happens Now at the Border?

A federal judge in Louisiana temporarily blocked the Biden administration from lifting a health-related restriction on people entering the United States, which the White House had planned to end today, May 23. Title 42 of the US Code: Public Health and Welfare prohibits entry into the US when the director of the CDC believes “there is a serious danger to the introduction of disease into the United States.” Enacted during the Trump years, the regulation has been used to block or remove immigrants who may be carrying the COVID virus. With migrants gathered on the south side of the US-Mexico border in anticipation of Title 42 ending, what will happen? Perhaps a better question would be, has the White House been ignoring the rule since Joe Biden took office, anyway?

Over the past 16 months a staggering number of illegal aliens have crossed the southern border, with scant attention paid to their medical histories or current conditions. Meanwhile, the administration has fought tooth and nail to keep Americans masked. Even now, masks are still required for many travelers on trains, aircraft, and other transportation systems. In parts of the country an American citizen still cannot enter private places of business without showing proof of COVID-19 vaccination. More than two years into the pandemic, no reasonable person can argue these restrictions stopped the spread of COVID-19 and now, the CDC has obviously determined the threat is so insignificant that Title 42 is no longer necessary. Clearly, someone is confused, misinformed, or perhaps just doesn’t care.

In April, Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection in the Trump administration, told The Daily Signal Podcast:

“If we move to just this fiscal year alone, the first six months of this fiscal year, 1.2 million encounters, over 300,000 ‘got-aways,’ and a couple hundred thousand ‘turn-backs.’ That’s over 1.7 million illegal aliens that have tried to break into this country. That shatters 20-year record highs, and right now it’s getting worse.”

While it might appear to many people that the current administration has allowed a virtually unrestrained flood of illegals to cross the southern border and then travel throughout the country, a very significant number of migrants have been removed using Title 42. That was about to end until Judge Robert Summerhays ordered that the public health rule must remain in place. As Morgan explained:

“This administration, in their, again, infinite wisdom of open-border policies, now have decided to end Title 42. They’ve used that in the past 14 months to remove well over a million illegal aliens. Once they remove that, those illegal aliens they’ve been removing, now they’re going to come into the United States, and they’re anticipating it’s going to take this catastrophic crisis, make it worse. And that’s why I say it’s going to be like the Hindenburg crashing into the Titanic.”

The problem for Republicans and vulnerable border state Democrats who panned the administration for its plan to end Title 42 is the difficulty in monitoring to what extent, if at all, the White House flouts Judge Summerhays’ ruling. The border patrol is already stretched to breaking point as streams of illegals continue to cross into the US. It appears already that the public health policy put in place by the Trump administration has been only partially enforced since the beginning of 2021. More legal action by Arizona, Louisiana, and the almost dozen other states that sued the administration over ending Title 42 could be in the works. Meanwhile, allowing the resumption of normal life for Americans seems to be something in which the White House has little interest.