'Arbitrary, Racist, and Unfair': Judge Blocks Biden From Ending Title 42

Immigrant rights advocates on Friday denounced a federal judge's injunction blocking the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden from lifting Title 42, a Trump-era public health order that both presidents have invoked to deport around two million asylum-seekers under the pretext of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Judge Robert Summerhays of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana—an appointee of then-President Donald Trump—concurred with 24 Republican-controlled states' assertion that the Biden administration's decision to terminate the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) rule "violates the Administrative Procedures Act" because it "failed to consider the effects of a Title 42 termination on immigration enforcement and the states."

Tami Goodlette, director of litigation at the immigrant legal aid group RAICES, called the judge's decision "both infuriating and unlawful."

"President Biden could have ended Title 42 and all of Trump's inhumane and immoral policies as soon as he took office in January 2021 with the flick of a pen," she continued, "but instead, he surrounded himself with centrist advisers who coddled his fears on immigration reform and embraced deterrence as their central priority on immigration."