President Joe Biden is coming under sustained pressure from both sides of the aisle over the administration’s handling of the expiration of Title 42, the controversial Trump-era pandemic public health restriction that became a key tool to turn back migrants at the US-Mexico border.
Title 42 was a public health order established early on in the pandemic with the aim of preventing the spread of Covid-19, and it allowed authorities to swiftly expel migrants at US land borders. The measure expired on Thursday at 11:59 p.m. ET.
Now, US immigration agencies are returning to decades-old protocols at a time of unprecedented mass migration in the Western hemisphere.
As it grapples with the challenge, the administration has also pointed to additional authorities it is using following Title 42’s expiration, including the expansion of legal pathways and a surge of resources to the border.
Biden faces the difficult task of showing he can control the border and handle an anticipated influx of migrants humanely, while navigating continued criticism from both Republicans and Democrats.
At the stroke of midnight on Friday, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement that migrants should not “believe the lies of smugglers” as Title 42 had expired, reiterating, “The border is not open.” He said the country is “ready to humanely process and remove people without a legal basis to remain in the US.”
Mayorkas told “CNN This Morning” that the administration has “been planning for months.”
“Really, what this situation reflects is the fact that we are operating within very serious constraints,” he told CNN’s Phil Mattingly Friday morning, pointing to “a fundamentally broken immigration system that hasn’t been fixed for more than two decades” and Congress’ refusal to provide the…
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