As the COVID-19 delta variant raged across the state of Florida, pushing new virus cases to an all-time high and obliterating the capacity of overwhelmed hospitals, Gov. Ron DeSantis held a news conference last week in Panama City.
His focus, however, wasn’t slowing the virus’ spread or promoting mitigation measures like mask-wearing and social distancing; The Republican governor has, in fact, barred localities from mandating masks and threatened to withhold funding and salaries from school districts that require face coverings.
DeSantis instead found a different target for his remarks on the virus: President Joe Biden and his handling of immigration.
For the president, immigration and the pandemic – the former a perennially politically charged issue, the latter an unfortunate and high-stakes victim of increasing polarization – have arisen to complicate the other, frustrating his agenda on both and opening him up to pointed criticism even from supporters.
Biden campaigned on reforming the U.S. asylum system and restoring humanity to the immigration system, particularly at the border. But he has left in place a Trump-era public health order known as Title 42 that allows border agents to immediately expel migrants caught crossing the border, depriving them of the right to seek asylum.
Experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initially pushed back against the order in March 2020, citing a lack of public health rationale, prompting former President Donald Trump to directly intervene and push the CDC to issue the order.
Biden formally exempted unaccompanied migrant children from the order earlier this year, but it still applies to migrant families and single adults – though migrant families are largely being let into the U.S. because Mexico refuses to take them back.
Advocates have been urging Biden for months to scrap the policy, which they say hypocritically contradicts his campaign promises of restoring the asylum system. It’s also pushed recidivism rates sky high, resulting in more border encounters. It flies in the face of recommendations from the United Nations and is out of step with practices from other countries, and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has urged the U.S. to end it.
Experts and advocates point out that there are other coronavirus-mitigation techniques the federal government can use when dealing with migrants and that the order is of dubious public health value given the fact that millions of vehicles and pedestrians cross the U.S.-Mexico border each month at ports of entry without even so much as a COVID-19 test. The U.S. has restricted all non-essential travel across land borders, but essential travel continues to result in tens of thousands of crossings each day.
Critics have also questioned some of Biden’s other virus-related travel restrictions, including travel bans from people coming from certain countries.
The Biden administration was reportedly planning to wind down the Title 42 program for migrant families by the end of July. But last week, the White House dug in its heels and indefinitely extended the order, citing the rapid spread of the delta variant and concerns about overcrowding at border facilities.
The administration was also reportedly concerned that it would be blamed for a resurgence of the coronavirus, according to The Washington Post.
