US Appeals Court Sides with Biden, Allows Border Expulsions of Families to Continue

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US Appeals Court Sides with Biden, Allows Border Expulsions of Families to Continue
US Appeals Court Sides with Biden, Allows Border Expulsions of Families to Continue
News – World: A US appeals court has ruled that the administration of President Joe Biden can continue to expel migrants with children who are stopped along the US border with Mexico.
The ruling on Thursday allows the Biden administration to continue the use of a public health order – known as Title 42 – to quickly expel migrants while a lawsuit challenging the policy proceeds.

Issued in March 2020 by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under former President Donald Trump, the order cited the need to limit the spread of the Covid-19.

A federal judge, however, ruled on Sept. 16 that the policy could not be applied to families. The public health law the Title 42 policy is based on does not permit the expulsions of migrants, Judge Emmet Sullivan of the US District Court for the District of Columbia wrote at the time.

He wrote that forcing the migrants to leave the US denies them the “opportunity to seek humanitarian benefits” they are entitled to under immigration law.

That order was set to take effect on Thursday, however, the Biden administration appealed.

Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said he was disappointed in the latest ruling, noting, “but it is just an initial step in the appellate litigation.”

“Nothing stops the Biden administration from immediately repealing this horrific Trump-era policy,” he said.

“If the administration is making the political calculation that if it acts inhumanely now it can act more humanely later, that calculation is misguided and o

little solace to the families that are being sent to Haiti or brutalized in Mexico right now.”

Biden has sought since taking office in January to reverse many of Trump’s hardline immigration policies. Republican-led Texas and Missouri challenged the Democratic president’s move.

The migrant crisis at the southern border with Mexico came under spotlight again last week after images showed US Border Patrol agents on horseback seen whipping Haitian migrants.

Nearly 15,000 Haitians had gathered in a makeshift camp under a bridge in a Texas border town. The administration, using the Title 42 policy, quickly expelled thousands of people – including families with small children – back to Haiti. The US special envoy to Haiti resigned in protest over the expulsions.

Biden has come under harsh criticism by some health experts, immigration advocates, and fellow Democrats who have called on him to stop applying the Title 42 order that has essentially cut off access to asylum for hundreds of thousands of migrants.

Source: Press TV