Immigrants forced to remain in Mexico will be able to resume their journey to the United States soon.
That’s because the highest court in the U.S. has just passed a decision allowing Joe Biden’s administration to end former President Donald Trump’s “stay in Mexico” policy.
Citing public health concerns, the previous administration had ordered migration authorities to prevent asylum seekers from Mexico from setting foot on U.S. soil or to put them in jail. As a result, hundreds of thousands of migrants were forced to remain in Mexico, where many of them were subjected to acts of violence of all kinds. A policy that has been widely denounced by immigrant rights organizations in the United States who speak of a flagrant violation of international conventions and treaties on the right of immigrants to seek political asylum in any country.This is also the opinion of Joe Biden’s team for whom argues that Donald Trump’s public health policy “exposes asylum seekers, including mothers with children, to dangerous conditions.
For Title 42 supporters, the public health protocols prevent the spread of infectious diseases such as coronavirus. They also fear a massive exodus of immigrants from Latin and Central America to the United States. These are concerns that the administration of Joe Biden intends to address by adopting provisions that could “lighten the burden of the immigration system” by increasing the number of migration officers. This would reduce the processing time of asylum seekers.
The administration of Joe Biden had already put an end to Donald Trump’s Title 42. But that decision was challenged in court by the Republican-led states of Texas and Missouri. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans and another court sided with the governors in ordering the executive branch to reinstate the controversial health protection law. The Supreme Court overturned that decision. In an order issued Thursday, five of the court’s nine justices voted to overturn Donald Trump’s policy. The head of America’s highest court, John Roberts, believes that the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals exceeded its rights in deciding to uphold the migrant protection protocols commonly known as Title 42. Under “the court of appeals’ interpretation,” a judge could “compel the executive branch to sit down at the negotiating table with Mexico over a policy that both countries wish to end, and to oversee the continuation of negotiations with Mexico to ensure that they are conducted ‘in good faith,'” wrote Judge Roberts. Another conservative judge also sided with John Roberts. The statistics on the number of people deported under the health protection protocol were “relatively low,” Brett Kavanaugh noted, adding, “In general, when there is insufficient detention capacity, both the option of parole and the option of return to Mexico are legally permissible options under immigration law. As recent history illustrates, every president since the late 1990s has used the parole option, and President Trump has also used the option to return to Mexico for a relatively small group of non-citizens.” Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, and Amy Coney Barrett voted to uphold Title 42.””Due to the sheer number of aliens attempting to enter Mexico illegally, DHS does not have the capacity to detain all inadmissible aliens encountered at the border, and no one is suggesting that DHS should do the impossible. But rather than take advantage of Congress’s clear statutory alternative to remove ineligible aliens to Mexico pending their removal proceedings in this country, DHS has concluded that it can forego that option and instead simply release into this country untold numbers of aliens who are highly likely to be removed if they show up for their removal hearing. This practice violates the clear terms of the law, but the Court turns a blind eye,” argued Samuel Alito in his dissent, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.
The decision to rescind Title 42 has been welcomed by migrant rights advocates and Democrats, who say they fear a mass exodus to Uncle Sam’s country. But the Biden administration has taken steps to ease the pressure on migration authorities. Temporary shelters have been built at several border points to avoid a repeat of last year’s spectacle when thousands of migrants, mostly Haitians, gathered under the Del Rio Bridge in Texas.