Washington (Times Of Ocean)- Joe Biden’s administration has eased a controversial border policy from the era of former President Donald Trump, which means that unaccompanied migrant children will no longer be deported from the United States.
“The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) director is terminating with respect to unaccompanied noncitizen children an Order under Title 42 suspending the right to introduce certain persons into the United States”, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said early on Saturday.
“In effect, this means that unaccompanied noncitizen children will not be expelled from the United States under CDC’s order.”
At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the CDC issued Title 42, allowing US authorities to swiftly expel migrant families caught at the U.S.-Mexico border without the opportunity to seek refuge here.
Since the policy went into effect, migrants have been turned away more than 1.6 million times, though some of those encounters occurred when people crossed multiple times.
In a separate 21-page order justifying the decision to end Title 42 for unaccompanied children, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky cited a decrease in COVID-19 cases across the United States as well as increased vaccination rates in the countries of migrants who journey to the southern border.
Biden exempted unaccompanied children from the expulsion policy early in his presidency, but a federal judge in Texas recently ruled that minors could not be excluded in a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas against the administration.
Texas’ ruling, which is at odds with another U.S. district court order in 2020 prohibiting the expulsion of unaccompanied minors, has put pressure on the administration to consider rolling back the order entirely.