If You Oppose COVID Emergency Powers, You Should Oppose Title 42 Expulsions

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that a pandemic-era restriction on border crossings known as Title 42 will remain in place for the time being, allowing U.S. immigration officials to keep swiftly expelling migrants and denying them the opportunity to seek asylum.

The Trump administration first imposed that measure in March 2020, ostensibly to combat the rising tide of COVID-19 by keeping out migrants who might spread the disease. The Biden administration kept the order in place. Since the order was first invoked, federal immigration officials have carried out millions of Title 42 expulsions at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The SCOTUS ruling is the latest installment in a lengthy legal battle over the order. Just last month, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia vacated the order because it wasn't properly enacted and the government had failed to consider the potential harms of the policy. Yesterday, joining Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissent, Justice Neil Gorsuch offered another reason why the border measure needs to go.

"The emergency on which those orders were premised has long since lapsed," wrote Gorsuch. In April, Gorsuch writes, the federal government "terminated the Title 42 orders after determining that emergency immigration restrictions were no longer necessary or appropriate to address COVID-19." Though the Biden administration keeps extending the COVID-19 federal public health emergency, the president has also said "the pandemic is over." Certain emergency policies enacted at the federal level—such as extended unemployment benefits—have ended.