Today, NIJC joined more than 200 civil society organizations in a letter to the U.S. House of Representatives leadership, urging members of Congress to ensure that a legislative provision that would indefinitely continue mass expulsions at the southern border not receive a vote on the House floor.
Two of the government spending bills for Fiscal Year 2023 passed out of the House of Representatives’ Appropriations Committee with a harmful and dangerous amendment that would indefinitely prolong the Title 42 expulsions policy that was invented by the Trump administration and continues to result in mass deportations of asylum seekers to this day. Leadership needs to hear from the advocacy community that it is unacceptable for Congress to allow a vote on any bill that includes a legislative codification of a program designed to dismantle the asylum system.
“‘Title 42’ may sound innocuous,” the letter states; “in reality it is a policy invented by the Trump administration to dismantle the U.S. asylum system, under the guise of specious public health justifications. Keeping Title 42 in place puts refugees at risk, exacerbates chaos at the border, and serves no legitimate public health goals.”
The continuation of Title 42 expulsions is a stain on the Biden administration, and it is incumbent on congressional leadership to ensure this harmful policy not be codified through the legislative process.
Read the full text of the letter here.
Heidi Altman is director of policy at NIJC.