W.Va. Senators fight to extend Title 42 at southern border

With only days left before the scheduled expiration of Title 42 at the southern border, legislators, including both U.S. Senators from West Virginia, are trying to get an extension.

Title 42 was initiated by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) during the Trump administration in 2020 in response to the pandemic and directed the U.S. to turn away migrants at the border as a precaution to avoid the spread of COVIID.

President Joe Biden continued the precaution when he was elected, except for unaccompanied children, but wanted to allow it to expire earlier that year in May, raising opposition because of the record number of illegals already trying to cross the border.

However, a court decision put that expiration on hold.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said during a virtual press briefing Thursday that if Title 42 ends, those numbers will rise, especially considering how little is done now to deter people from trying to cross the border.

“We see that this administration has done very little, and probably nothing, in deterring the flow,” she said, with over 9,000 a day now being apprehended. “It will expire on Dec. 21 … and we are going to have more and more. It is very, very frustrating.”

Those numbers also mean more of the deadly drug fentanyl will make it across the border as well, she said, exacerbating what is already an overdose crisis in the country, and in West Virginia.

Senators Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. and John Cornyn, R-Texas, along with a bipartisan group of Congressmen, on Wednesday sent a letter to Biden to extend the CDC Title 42 order beyond the Dec. 21 deadline.

“We have a crisis at our southern border,” they said. “Never before in our nation’s history have we experienced this scope and scale of illegal border crossings, and we remain concerned that your administration has not provided sufficient support or resources to the men and women of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who are tasked with maintaining border security.”

According to the federal Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS), more than 2 million illegal immigrants were arrested crossing the southern border during fiscal year 2021-22 (Oct. 1, 2021 to Sept. 30, 2022).

Of those 2 million, more than 1 million were expelled from the border and not allowed to apply for asylum under Title 42.

Since March 2020, the U.S. has carried out over 2.4 million migrant expulsions along its southern border under the policy.

In April, after the CDC said it would stop authorizing Title 42 as the pandemic eased, Biden announced an end to it on May 23.

However, a coalition of Republican states filed a lawsuit to keep Title 42 in place and a federal judge temporarily blocked Biden’s move.

Last month, a federal judge ruled that Title 42 is illegal, prompting the Dec. 21 expiration date.

If it ends, the U.S. will have to consider migrant cases of those seeking asylum although a shortage of personnel and resources to do that looms.

The letter said in that In May 2022, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated that he was anticipating as many as 18,000 unlawful crossings per day once Title 42 is lifted.

Based on recent court filings, DHS is almost completely reliant on Title 42 to control migration from Mexico and the Northern Triangle; the vast majority of Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Salvadorans encountered by U.S. Border Patrol along the border in October 2022 were expelled under Title 42 rather than processed under Title 8 (for asylum seekers), the senators said in the letter.

“We are committed to enacting bipartisan legislation that will allow DHS to effectively implement policies and programs that have been revealed as critical to maintaining operational control over the southern border, and do not involve paroling large numbers of migrants into the United States to undergo months — or years-long processes,” the letter said to Biden. “These negotiations will take time. In the interim, we urge you to do everything within your power to extend the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC’s) Title 42 order beyond the looming December 21 deadline until Congress can act.”

The legislators wrote that while “admittedly imperfect, termination of the CDC’s Title 42 order at this time will result in a complete loss of operational control over the southern border, a profoundly negative impact on border communities, and significant suffering and fatalities among the migrants unlawfully entering the United States.”

Capito said Thursday Biden needs to go to the border and see what is happening there first-hand.

“He hasn’t yet been to the border (since taking office),” she said.