Title 42, the xenophobic Trump-era migrant policy, is dead (again)

Title 42, the xenophobic policy that allowed U.S. officials to turn migrants away at the border because of Covid, was ruled unconstitutional by a judge who put an end to it Monday. 

Title 42 is a holdover from the Trump administration that was conceived by white nationalist White House adviser Stephen Miller. Effectively, the policy allowed the Trump administration to bar millions of migrants from entering the United States, where they would legally be allowed to request asylum. 

As NBC News explained:

Since the Trump administration implemented the rule in March 2020 because of the Covid pandemic, the federal agency has turned people back 2 million times. In May, a federal judge in Louisiana blocked the Biden administration’s attempt to end the policy. [U.S. District Judge Emmet] Sullivan said the rule violates the Administrative Procedures Act and argued that it’s “arbitrary and capricious.” His ruling stemmed from a lawsuit brought by a group of asylum-seeking families who fled to the U.S.

The Biden administration was inexplicably slow to rescind Title 42 and faced a deluge of criticism from Democrats and human rights activists for continuing the policy as long as they had. Still, a lawsuit filed by Republican attorneys general in multiple states successfully tied the administration’s hands until Tuesday.