Senior Department of Homeland Security officials have planned to tell Mexico that a controversial Trump-era border policy enacted during the pandemic could end as early as April, which could lead to a surge in immigrants at the border. and a strain on resources, according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News.
The existence of such planning, which has been revealed in a draft document, comes as the Biden administration deals with the fallout from two federal court orders on the border policy known as Title 42, which was met with rebukes from Senate Democrats and immigrant advocates who have long argued it was illegal.
Former President Donald Trump first cited Title 42 as a way to contain the coronavirus by deporting immigrants at the border and preventing them from entering the US asylum system. Some immigrants are quickly deported to Mexico and others are flown back to their country of origin. President Joe Biden has continued to enforce the policy during court challenges, deporting people at the border more than a million times in the process.
But a pair of court rulings – including one in which a judge ordered that immigrant children continue to be turned away at the border – as well as an already evolving federal response to the pandemic in the United States could spell the end of politics. A senior DHS official told BuzzFeed News that the agency is planning for Title 42 to end. And the draft document obtained by BuzzFeed News also references the department’s ongoing “contingency planning” for when that will happen. gone happen. Wednesday, Reuters also reported that the administration was “leaning” toward the end of Title 42.
In the meantime, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is expected to meet with Mexican officials next week.
DHS officials, in particular, planned to stress to Mexico that if Title 42 is no longer in place, the agency will have to resume processing immigrants who cross the border without permission through normal pre-COVID practices, which would allow them to seek asylum and protection in the United States. Prior to Title 42, immigrants apprehended at the border could apply for asylum and their applications were assessed to determine if they could remain in the country to pursue their business.
But these pre-pandemic practices could “seriously strain” border resources and lead to a dire humanitarian situation in northern Mexico, the DHS draft document warns. Department officials are also expressing concern over the “historically and unusually high” number of immigrants crossing the border without permission.
The use of Title 42 gave the Biden administration more than a year to consider changes to border policies and the asylum system. But it remains to be seen if any major changes will be in place when Title 42 goes away. Administration officials have been keen to implement a plan to radically reshape the way asylum seekers are processed in order to deal with a massive backlog of immigration court cases, potentially reducing the waiting period for some multi-year applicants. The plan, which has yet to be released in its final version, would shift decision-making power over whether certain immigrants encountered at the border are granted asylum from an immigration judge to an asylum officer.