WASHINGTON, D.C. — Last week, a federal judge issued a nationwide preliminary injunction halting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) decision to terminate Title 42 expulsions. Under the Trump and Biden administrations, Title 42 has resulted in summary expulsions under the guise of the COVID-19 pandemic since March 2020. On April 1, 2022, the CDC finally issued its decision to end this harmful practice, that has resulted in over 10,000 documented cases of people returned to harm. Following lawsuits by opposing states, a federal judge decided to keep Title 42 in place.

Azadeh Erfani, Senior Policy Analyst with the National Immigrant Justice Center, stated the following in response to this decision:

“Title 42 is an unlawful and racist policy that must end immediately. The prior administration created Title 42 expulsions out of thin air, usurping public health authority to shut down the border to migrants and asylum seekers. Nearly two million expulsions later, this policy continues to flout decades of immigration and asylum laws. This country has yet to reckon with the white supremacist ideology that taints Title 42, which equates migration and contagion and pushes back countless Black, Brown, and Indigenous people seeking protection. We continue to call on the Biden administration and Congress to do the right thing: end this unlawful policy and reject this racist public health ban on asylum.”