WASHINGTON — A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the U.S. government can no longer use a Covid-era policy that allowed authorities to severely limit asylum seekers from crossing the border into the country.
Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia vacated the controversial rule, known as Title 42, which U.S. Customs and Border Protection has used to turn back migrants at the border with Mexico before they could make an asylum claim.
Since the rule was implemented by the Trump administration in March 2020 due to the Covid pandemic, the federal agency has turned back people 2 million times. In May, a federal judge in Louisiana blocked the Biden administration’s attempt to end the Trump-era policy.
“Title 42 was a misuse of the public health laws from the beginning and has cause grace harm to tens of thousands of desperate asylum seekers. The practical significance of the ruling cannot be overstated,” Lee Gelernt of the ACLU, one of the lead attorneys on the case to end Title 42, told NBC News on Tuesday.
He added that Sullivan’s ruling essentially overrides the Louisiana court’s decision to stop the Biden administration from ending Title 42.
The Department of Homeland Security has not yet responded to requests on how it plans to move forward.
Sullivan said the rule violates the Administrative Procedures Act and argued that it’s “arbitrary and capricious.” The decision stemmed from a lawsuit brought by a group of asylum-seeking families who fled to the U.S.
In April, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas formally announced that the agency would end Title 42 on May 23 and allow families and single adult asylum seekers who had been turned away at the U.S.-Mexico border to enter the U.S. At the time, there were thousands of migrants living in poor conditions and camps in northern Mexico after being turned back from crossing.
But before the Biden administration lifted the rule, U.S. District Judge Robert Summerhays of the Western District of Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction, blocking officials from ending it.
A separate court order on May 24 in Washington, D.C., restored the ability of migrant families to cite fear of persecution and torture as a path toward seeking protections in the U.S.
The conflicting orders, however, prompted Mayorkas to say “the restrictions at our Southwest border have not changed. Single adults and families encountered will continue to be expelled, where appropriate, under Title 42.”
The Biden administration has faced criticism on both sides of the aisle for its handling of Title 42. Republicans have been widely opposed to ending the policy, and several centrist Democrats have previously questioned whether the administration is ready for the predicted increase in asylum seekers.