On Monday, Chief Justice John Roberts ordered the Biden Admin. to halt the removal of Title 42. Title 42 is the migrant-expulsion public health order by the CDC under the Trump Admin. to help slow the spread of Covid-19. The policy has been the center of a lengthy ongoing legal battle between the administration and several Republican border states.
Chief Justice Roberts’s order came just a day before Title 42 was set to end, delivering a last-minute win for Republican-led states who charge the administration with failing to provide any help in dealing with a historic border breakdown caused by the administration’s policies.
Roberts’s order did not include a timeline on his reprieve, reports The Washington Times, but the order did give the Biden Admin. until Tuesday afternoon to reply to the aforementioned Republican states.
“The fight to keep Title 42 in place continues,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was quoted. Texas is the leader of the 19-state coalition, which sued to keep the policy at the border. The states charged that removing Title 42 could skyrocket already record high daily border crossings from approximately 7,000/day to upwards of 14,000/day.
The Biden Admin. and DHS repeatedly promised that they had a plan to deal with the inevitable increase in migration after the public health order was removed, but faith in that promise quickly faded as the true magnitude of the crisis was realized.
During the weekend leading up to the end of the policy, even Democratic officials began to sound the alarm over the expected surge in illegal migration.
New York Mayor Eric Adams even issued the dire warning that NYC could see upwards of 1,000 new arrivals from the southern border each week, which he said would stress the city’s already overloaded housing and emergency services.
Mayor Adams stated:
Our shelter system is full, and we are nearly out of money, staff and space. Truth be told, if corrective measures are not taken soon, we may very well be forced to cut or curtail programs New Yorkers rely on, and the pathway to house thousands more is uncertain.
El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser also declared a state of emergency over the weekend, explaining that it was needed to tap state funds to open more shelters and bring in food for thousands of migrants encamped on the city’s streets as temperatures dipped below freezing in southern Texas.
The Washington Times states:
The El Paso Times reported that the city expects up to 6,000 migrants a day once Title 42 ends. By contrast, during some months of the Trump administration, the Border Patrol caught just 12,000 migrants nationwide in an entire month.
“We want to make sure we’re prepared for that and we can react to that, so this is just the next step to make sure we’re prepared,” Deputy City Manager Mario D’Agostino said, according to the newspaper.
News of the Chief Justice’s order immediately made its way to the White House, where press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre erroneously laid the blame for the border chaos on smugglers and Republicans.
Sec. Jean-Pierre said:
If Republicans in Congress are serious about protecting the border, if they are serious about securing the border, if they are serious about the challenges that we’re currently seeing that they should be able to get involved here and make sure that the men and women of the Department of Homeland Security have the resources they need. They are going to need to do their jobs.
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