Top officials at the Department of Homeland Security have been planning to tell Mexico that a controversial Trump-era border policy enacted during the pandemic may come to an end as soon as April, which could lead to an increase of immigrants coming to the border and a strain on resources, according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News.
The existence of such planning, which was revealed in a draft document, comes as the Biden administration deals with the fallout of two federal court orders on the border policy known as Title 42, which has been met with rebukes from Senate Democrats and immigrant advocates who have long argued it is illegal.
Former president Donald Trump first cited Title 42 as a way to contain the coronavirus by expelling immigrants at the border and blocking them from access to the US asylum system. Some immigrants are quickly expelled to Mexico, and others are flown back to their home countries. President Joe Biden has continued to enforce the policy during court challenges, expelling people at the border more than 1 million times in the process.
But a pair of court rulings — including one in which a judge ordered the continuation of immigrant children being turned back at the border — along with an already evolving federal response to the pandemic within the US could spell the end of the policy. One senior DHS official told BuzzFeed News that the agency has been planning for the end of Title 42. And the draft document obtained by BuzzFeed News also references the department’s ongoing “contingency planning” for when it happens. On Wednesday, Reuters also reported that the administration was “leaning” toward ending Title 42.
In the meantime, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is expected to meet with Mexican officials next week.
DHS officials in particular planned to stress to Mexico that if Title 42 is no longer in place, the agency will need to return to processing immigrants who cross the border without authorization…
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